Google Sheets LEFT function trim text generated by IMPORTHTML function

Question

When I use this formula to import data

=iferror(INDEX(IMPORTHTML("http://www.thestreet.com/quote/GE/details/company-profile.html","table",3),8,1))

The result is Sector: Industrial Goods. I'd like to use the LEFT function to remove the Sector: text and show only Industrial Goods. I can't seem to get the syntax right. I can use this formula to show the length of the string:

=len(iferror(INDEX(IMPORTHTML("http://www.thestreet.com/quote/GE/details/company-profile.html","table",3),8,1)))

But can't figure out how to incorporate the LEFT function to get my result.

Answer 1

Short Answer

Instead of LEFT() use RIGHT().

Explanation

The LEFT() function returns the leftmost characters, but the OP want to get the rightmost characters.

The following is a simplified version of the final formula, for explanatory purposes:

=RIGHT("Sector: Industrial Goods",16)

The following is the final formula; in order to improve readability, each parameter is inserted in a new line:

 =RIGHT(
   iferror(
     INDEX(
       IMPORTHTML(
         "http://www.thestreet.com/quote/GE/details/company-profile.html",
          "table",
          3
        ),
        8,
        1
     )
   ),
   16
 )

Answer 2

There are a couple ways to do it:

If you specifically want to get rid of only that one element that shows up as "Sector" you can use the substitute function:

=substitute(iferror(INDEX(IMPORTHTML("http://www.thestreet.com/quote/GE/details/company-profile.html","table",3),8,1)),"Sector: ","")

alternatively, if you would like the function to remove any of the tag names, not only the sector one, you can use regexreplace:

=regexreplace(iferror(INDEX(IMPORTHTML("http://www.thestreet.com/quote/GE/details/company-profile.html","table",3),8,1)),".*\: ","")

You could also directly import that element using importxml. This site your pulling the data from has very organized and specific elements, for example:

=IMPORTXML("http://www.thestreet.com/quote/GE/details/company-profile.html","//*[@class='sectorName']")