← Functions

Manipulate Text by using Excel Commands and Functions

An overview of Excel text commands and functions including LEFT, RIGHT, FIND, SUBSTITUTE, CONCATENATE, TRIM, and more.

Excel includes a wide range of commands and functions for manipulating text. Each has specific uses that come in handy when cleaning, transforming, or analyzing text data.

Command

Text to Columns — splits a single column of text into multiple columns based on a delimiter.

Functions

  • LEFT — extracts a given number of characters from the left side of a text string
  • RIGHT — extracts a given number of characters from the right side of a text string
  • LEN — returns the number of characters in a text string
  • FIND — returns the position of a substring within a text string (case-sensitive)
  • SUBSTITUTE — replaces occurrences of a substring with a new string
  • CONCATENATE — joins two or more text strings into one
  • TRIM — removes extra spaces from text, leaving only single spaces between words
  • CLEAN — removes non-printable characters from text
  • COUNTA — counts the number of non-empty cells in a range
  • COUNTBLANK — counts the number of empty cells in a range
  • COUNTIF — counts cells that meet a specified condition
  • EXACT — compares two text strings and returns TRUE if they are identical (case-sensitive)
  • FIXED — formats a number as text with a fixed number of decimal places
  • ISTEXT — returns TRUE if a value is text
  • ISNONTEXT — returns TRUE if a value is not text
  • LOWER — converts text to lowercase
  • UPPER — converts text to uppercase
  • PROPER — converts text to title case (first letter of each word capitalized)
  • REPLACE — replaces part of a text string with a different string, based on position
  • REPLACEB — same as REPLACE but counts bytes instead of characters (for double-byte character sets)