Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for managing and analyzing text data. Text strings in Excel can contain various characters, including letters, numbers, symbols, and spaces. Sometimes, you may need to delete certain characters from a text string to clean up the data or prepare it for further analysis. Depending on your specific needs, there are several ways to delete characters from text strings in Excel. Some methods involve using built-in functions or formulas, while others require using Excel’s Find and Replace feature or a combination of functions and other tools. Excel also includes Kutools which contains add-ins that enhance built-in functions. Its features include combining sheets, merging cells without losing data, pasting to only visible cells, counting cells by color, and performing batch operations.
Note: Kutools is a third-party add-in for Excel that provides a range of advanced tools and features for working with text and data. You can download it from the Kutools website.
We can easily replace or remove a text string in Excel. If we want to remove that specific character, we can replace that character with an empty string. The str. replace() method will replace all occurrences of the specific character mentioned. You can perform the operations using these functions as follows,
=REPLACE(old_text, start_num, num_chars, new_text) =RIGHT(text,[num_chars]) =LEN(text)
But sometimes, these functions may cause some run-time errors, and users may perform typos while typing the functions or selecting them. To avoid these mistakes, you can use these Kutools (Pre-defined or built-in functions) to perform such operations.
In this article, we will explore some of the most common methods for deleting characters from text strings in Excel and provide step-by-step instructions for each method. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to manipulate text data in Excel and be able to apply these techniques to your projects.
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Remove a Certain Number of Characters from the Beginning of the Text String
If you want to remove a certain number of characters from the beginning or left of the text string, follow the below steps.
- Initially, you have to open Excel, and then you need to select the range that you want to remove certain characters.
- Go to the Kutools Tab, Select the Text option, and choose the Remove by Position option from the menu.
- Then, it will open the Remove by position Dialog Box.
- Numbers: In this box, you must specify the number of characters to remove.
- Position: Here, you need to check the From left option.
- Then, you have to click the OK button.
- Now, you can see that the specified number of characters has been removed from the range of text strings.
Delete a Certain Number of Characters from the End of the Text String
If you want to remove a certain number of characters from the end or right of the text string, do as follows,
- Initially, you need to select the range from that you want to remove certain characters.
- On the Kutools Tab, Select the Text option, and choose the Remove by Position option from the menu.
- Then, it will open the Remove by position Dialog Box.
- Numbers: In this box, you must specify the number of characters to remove.
- Position: Here, you need to check the From right option.
- Then, you have to click the OK button.
- The specified characters have been deleted from the right or end of the text strings.
Remove a Certain number of Characters from a Specified Position of a Text String
You can also remove a certain number of characters from a specified position of a text string. To do this, follow the steps given below:
- First, You need to select the range from that you want to remove certain characters.
- Go to the Kutools Tab, Select the Text option, and choose the Remove by Position option from the menu.
- Then, it will open the Remove by position Dialog Box.
- Numbers: In this box, you must specify the number of characters to remove.
- Position: Here, you must check the Specify option and select the character position using the given drop-down list.
- And then you have to click the OK button.
- Finally, you can see that the characters you specified have been removed from the text strings.
Real-time Example
A real-time example of deleting characters from text strings in Excel:
Suppose you have a column in an Excel worksheet containing the email addresses of employees in a company. However, some email addresses have an extra character, such as a space or an underscore. To clean up these email addresses, you can use the “Replace” function to remove unwanted characters.
Here are the steps:
- Select the column containing the email addresses that you want to clean up.
- Click on the “Home” tab in the Excel ribbon.
- Click on the “Find & Select” button, and then click on “Replace” from the dropdown menu.
- Enter the character you want to delete in the “Find what” field. For example, enter a space character if you want to delete spaces.
- Leave the “Replace with” field blank.
- Click on the “Replace All” button to delete all occurrences of the character in the selected column.
- Repeat the above steps for any other unwanted characters you want to delete.
- All the unwanted characters are removed from the email addresses, and you have a clean column of email addresses for the employees.
Conclusion
In this article, deleting characters from text strings in Excel can be useful for cleaning up and preparing data for further analysis. Several methods are available in Excel to accomplish this task, including using built-in functions, formulas, and the Find and Replace feature. This article has helped you better understand how to delete characters from text strings in Excel. With practice, you can become more proficient in using these methods and customize them to suit your specific needs.
Quick How-to-steps
To delete characters from text strings in Excel using Kutools, you can use the following steps:
- Open Excel and select the cells that contain the text strings you want to modify.
- Click on the “Kutools” tab in the Excel ribbon.
- In the “Text” group, click on the “Text Tools” option.
- From the drop-down menu, select “Remove Characters.”
- In the “Remove Characters” dialog box, select the “By Position” option.
- Specify the starting position and the number of characters you want to delete.
- Click on the “OK” button.
- It will delete the selected characters from the text strings.
- Repeat the process for any additional cells or ranges you want to modify.
Video Tutorial
Here you can clearly understand this article through this video demonstration.
FAQ
Kutools for Excel provides add-ins that enhance built-in functions for Microsoft Excel. Its features include combining sheets, merging cells without losing data, pasting to only visible cells, counting cells by color, and performing batch operations.
A cell range in MS Excel is a collection of chosen cells. It can be referred to as a formula.
To remove specific text from each cell in a selected range, press Ctrl + H to display the Find and Replace dialog, and then: Enter the unwanted text in the Find what box,
Leave the Replace with box blank.
Kutools is a utility with a good reputation software from a well-reputed company.
Hajira is a skilled financial analyst (Microsoft Certifications Completed) with more than 10 years of expertise in Excel. I love using Excel to assist individuals and organisations in enhancing their financial procedures. I like hiking and exploring outdoors when she’s not crunching mathematics. Follow me on my Mastodon account.
