You want to record the cities hosted the World Cups in Column P. You will write a formula in P2 to extract the city from K2. You will copy the formula all the way down. Please complete the formula.

=LEFT(K2,_____(", ",K2)-___)

You can only use a function name or a number in each space.

=LEFT(K2,[Fill in the blank],
(", ",K2)-[Fill in the blank],
)

Note: ", " is text containing a comma and a single space.

Question

You want to record the cities hosted the World Cups in Column P. You will write a formula  in P2 to extract the city from K2. You will copy the formula all the way down. Please complete the formula.

=LEFT(K2,_____(", ",K2)-___)

You can only use a function name or a number in each space.

=LEFT(K2,[Fill in the blank],
(", ",K2)-[Fill in the blank],
)

Note: ", " is text containing a comma and a single space.

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

We are given the task of extracting the city from a string in K2 where the format is typically 'City, Country'. The goal is to put a formula in P2 that returns just the city name and then copy it downward.

Option context: The formula provided is =LEFT(K2, _____(", ", K2) - _____). In this exercise, you are allowed to fill each blank with either a function name or a number.

First, consider how LEFT works: LEFT(text, num_chars) returns the leftmost num_chars characters from the text. To get the city name, we need the number of characters up to (but not including) the comma and space that separate City and Country, i.e., up to the string ", ".

To find the position of the comma-space delimiter ", ", we should use a function that returns the index of that substring within K2. The standard choice for this is FIND (or SEARCH, but FIND is case-sensitive and fits perfectly here). Therefore, the first blank should be the function name FIND, which will yield the position where ", " begins in K2.

For example, if K2 is "London, UK", FIND(", ", K2) returns 7, since the comma-space starts at the 7th character. Since LEFT requires the number of characters to return, we subtract 1 to exclude the comma and space, giving LEFT(K2, FIND(", ", K2) - 1) which yields "London".

Why this choice works: Using FIND with the substring ", " precisely locates the delimiter between city and country, and subtracting 1 trims off the delimiter portion, leaving just the city name. This approach handles cities with varying lengths as long as the delimiter is present and correctly formatted as a comma followed by a space.

Why the alternative reasoning would fail if attempted: If we used a fixed number or another function unnecessarily, we could either miss cities with different lengths, include the trailing comma and space, or fail when the delimiter isn’t found as expected. Other functions like MID or RIGHT aren’t appropriate here because the requirement is to determine how many characters to take from the left edge, based on the position of the delimiter, which is precisely what FIND provides.

In summary, filling the blanks with FIND and 1 yields the intended formula: =LEFT(K2, FIND(", ", K2) - 1). This returns the city name preceding the comma-space separator, ready to be copied down column P for all rows.

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