Split a string (cell) in Excel without VBA (e.g. for array formula)

Question

I have data in an Excel spreadsheet with delimited strings. For simplicity, think of something like \"4#8#10\", with an arbitrary number of pieces.

Is

Answer 1

To sum the entries 4,8,10 you could use something like:

=SUMPRODUCT(1*TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",REPT(" ",99)),(ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1))-1)*99+((ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1)))=1),99)))

The array that is returned is a text array, so the 1* at the beginning is one way to convert them to numbers

This part:

TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",REPT(" ",99)),(ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1))-1)*99+((ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1)))=1),99))

returns the array:

{"4";"8";"10"}

And with 1* before it:

{4;8;10}

Edit After six years, more succinct formulas are available to create the array:

With Excel O365 and the SEQUENCE function:

=1*(TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",REPT(" ",99)),IF(SEQUENCE(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1)=1,1,(SEQUENCE(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#",""))+1)-1)*99),99)))

With Excel 2010+ for Windows (not MAC versions) with the FILTERXML funcdtion:

=FILTERXML("" & SUBSTITUTE(A1,"#","") & "","//s")

Note that the FILTERXML function extracts the values as numbers, whereas the first formula extracts the numbers as text which must be converted to numbers before being used in a numeric formula.