
To comment on this article or to share your favorite Excel tip, please post a comment below or drop us a note. This is very useful if your number contains a hyphen, dash, dots, or any other text.
REMOVE HYPHENS FROM SSN IN EXCEL FOR MAC HOW TO
But what if the substring you want to extract could start anywhere within the string? In a future article, we'll show you how to use the Find function in conjunction with the Mid function to locate and extract a string, regardless of how many characters the source string contains. In this video, I'll show you how to remove any text from a cell in excel. Knowing that the middle string always started in the fourth position made it easy to use the Mid function.

In this simple example, our source string always contained the same number of characters. Of course, we've just scratched the surface of what you can do with the "big three" string functions. This technique comes in handy when you're importing text files that have dumped from a mainframe database or from some other application. patient has cataracts removed from both eyes during the same surgical session. It only takes a minute or two to compose the function call and copy it to the appropriate cells. Once you've extracted the strings, then what?Īfter you've used the string functions to parse the source string into substrings, you're free to sort or subtotal your data on any of the columns that contain those substrings.

Figure D: The Right function makes it easy to copy a set of characters from the right side of a string. You can remove unwanted hyphens using the Substitute function, or a combination of the Left, Mid, and Right functions both solutions are illustrated in column C in the screenshot below.
