Text Functions

Functions for working with text strings

ARRAYTOTEXT Function

The ARRAYTOTEXT function converts arrays, ranges, or individual values into a text representation. It transforms Excel data into readable text strings, making it perfect for displaying array results in single cells or creating parseable text outputs for formulas.

ASC Function

The Excel ASC function converts full-width (double-byte) Japanese characters to half-width (single-byte) equivalents for DBCS languages. This is essential for data standardization and compatibility in Japanese Excel environments.

BAHTTEXT Function

The Excel BAHTTEXT function converts numeric values into Thai text representation with a 'Baht' currency suffix, ideal for formal financial documents and receipts in Thailand.

CHAR Function

The Excel CHAR function converts numeric code page values (1-255) into their corresponding characters based on your computer's character set. Essential for importing data from legacy systems or creating special symbols and control characters in spreadsheets.

CLEAN Function

The CLEAN function removes all nonprintable characters from text strings, making imported data clean and printable.

CODE Function

The Excel CODE function converts the first character of a text string into its corresponding numeric ASCII code. This is essential for text analysis, character manipulation, and understanding how Excel interprets different characters based on your operating system's character set.

CONCAT Function

The CONCAT function in Excel combines multiple text strings or ranges into a single text string. It's a modern replacement for CONCATENATE with enhanced range support, making it ideal for joining data from cells, columns, or rows efficiently.

DBCS Function

The Excel DBCS function converts half-width (single-byte) characters within a text string to full-width (double-byte) characters. This is particularly useful for Japanese text processing where half-width English letters or katakana need to be transformed into their full-width equivalents based on your system's language settings.

DETECTLANGUAGE Function

The Excel DETECTLANGUAGE function automatically identifies the language of text using Microsoft Translator services. Returns a standard language code (ISO 639-1) for the detected language, making it perfect for multilingual data analysis and content processing.

DOLLAR Function

The DOLLAR function transforms numeric values into currency-formatted text strings, automatically rounding to the specified decimal places. It applies regional currency symbols based on your Excel language settings, making it perfect for financial reports and invoices.

EXACT Function

The EXACT function compares two text strings and returns TRUE if they are exactly identical, FALSE otherwise. It performs a case-sensitive comparison, making it ideal for validating text entries and ensuring precise string matches in Excel worksheets.

FIND, FINDB Functions

The FIND function locates a substring within text and returns its starting position, performing case-sensitive searches. FINDB is the double-byte character set version, now deprecated as modern FIND handles Unicode properly.

FIXED Function

The Excel FIXED function rounds a number to a specified number of decimal places, formats it with commas as thousand separators, and returns the result as text. Perfect for creating formatted number displays in reports and dashboards.

LEFT and LEFTB Functions

The LEFT function extracts the first characters from a text string based on the specified number, while LEFTB handles byte-based extraction for double-byte character sets. These functions are essential for parsing text data from the left side.

LEN & LENB Functions

The Excel LEN function counts characters in a text string, treating each Unicode character as one unit. LENB counts bytes for double-byte character sets (DBCS), but is deprecated in modern Excel versions.

LOWER Function

The Excel LOWER function converts all uppercase letters in a text string to lowercase letters while preserving non-letter characters like numbers, punctuation, and spaces unchanged.

MID Function

The Excel MID function extracts a specific number of characters from a text string, starting at the position you specify. It's perfect for pulling substrings from larger text values like names, codes, or data fields.

MID & MIDB Functions

The MID function extracts a specific number of characters from any position within a text string. MIDB serves the same purpose but counts each double-byte character as two single-byte characters, making it suitable for certain double-byte language systems. MIDB is now deprecated in modern Excel.

NUMBERVALUE Function

The Excel NUMBERVALUE function converts text strings representing numbers into actual numeric values, regardless of regional formatting differences. It handles custom decimal and thousands separators, making it perfect for processing imported data from various locales.

PHONETIC Function

The Excel PHONETIC function extracts furigana (phonetic) characters from Japanese text strings. It pulls out the ruby text annotations that appear above kanji characters to show their pronunciation.

PROPER Function

The Excel PROPER function capitalizes the first letter of each word in a text string while converting all other letters to lowercase. It's perfect for formatting names, titles, and headings into proper title case automatically.

REGEXEXTRACT Function

The REGEXEXTRACT function extracts text strings from data using powerful regular expression patterns. Perfect for pulling specific information like phone numbers, emails, dates, or custom formats from unstructured text.

REGEXREPLACE Function

The REGEXREPLACE function performs powerful text substitutions using regular expressions, enabling precise pattern matching and replacement within strings. This advanced text processing tool is essential for data cleaning, formatting standardization, and complex string manipulation tasks in Excel.

REGEXTEST Function

The REGEXTEST function performs regular expression matching to determine if any part of a text string matches a specified pattern. It returns TRUE for matches and FALSE otherwise, enabling powerful text pattern validation and data analysis.

REPLACE & REPLACEB Functions

The REPLACE function substitutes specific characters within a text string based on character position, while REPLACEB does the same using byte counts for double-byte character sets. REPLACE is the modern standard; REPLACEB is deprecated.

REPT Function

The Excel REPT function repeats a specified text string a given number of times. It's perfect for creating visual separators, filling cells with repeating patterns, or generating custom progress bars and formatting elements within Excel cells.

RIGHT & RIGHTB Functions

The RIGHT function extracts specified number of characters from the end of a text string. RIGHTB does the same but counts bytes instead of characters, designed for double-byte character sets like Japanese.

SEARCH & SEARCHB Functions

The SEARCH function finds the position of one text string within another, returning the starting character position. SEARCHB provides byte-based positioning for double-byte character sets. Both functions are case-insensitive and support wildcard searches.

SUBSTITUTE Function

The Excel SUBSTITUTE function replaces specific text within a larger text string. It targets and swaps designated text portions with new content, making it perfect for cleaning data, standardizing formats, and transforming strings dynamically.

T Function

Extracts text from a value, returning the text if present or an empty string for non-text values.

TEXT Function

The TEXT function transforms numeric values, dates, and times into formatted text strings using custom format codes. Perfect for creating professional reports, combining numbers with text while preserving exact formatting, or displaying values in specific regional formats.

TEXTAFTER Function

The TEXTAFTER function extracts text that appears after a specified delimiter within a text string. Perfect for parsing structured data like names, addresses, or file paths by pulling content that follows specific characters or words.

TEXTBEFORE Function

The TEXTBEFORE function extracts all text that appears before a specified delimiter within a text string. Perfect for parsing filenames, URLs, email addresses, or any structured text data where you need everything before a consistent separator.

TEXTJOIN Function

The TEXTJOIN function elegantly combines multiple text strings or ranges into a single text value using a customizable delimiter. It automatically skips empty cells when specified, making it perfect for clean data consolidation from lists, tables, or dynamic ranges.

TEXTSPLIT Function

The TEXTSPLIT function dynamically divides text strings into arrays using specified column and row delimiters. It provides a formula-based alternative to the Text-to-Columns feature, enabling flexible data separation across columns or rows.

TRANSLATE Function

The Excel TRANSLATE function leverages Microsoft Translator services to convert text from one language to another directly within your spreadsheets. This powerful tool eliminates the need for external translation applications and enables seamless multilingual data processing.

TRIM Function

The TRIM function cleans text by removing all extra spaces, keeping only single spaces between words. Perfect for standardizing imported data, preparing text for searches, or fixing spacing issues from other applications.

UNICHAR Function

The Excel UNICHAR function converts a Unicode number into its corresponding character, enabling you to insert special symbols, emojis, and international characters directly into your spreadsheets using numeric codes.

UNICODE Function

The Excel UNICODE function returns the Unicode code point number (decimal value) for the first character in a text string. This is essential for working with international characters, special symbols, and non-ASCII text in spreadsheets.

UPPER Function

The Excel UPPER function converts all lowercase letters in a text string to uppercase. It's perfect for standardizing text formatting, creating consistent data entry, and preparing text for comparisons or lookups that require case uniformity.

VALUE Function

The Excel VALUE function converts text that appears as a number, date, or time into a genuine numeric value. This is particularly useful when importing data or working with text-formatted numbers that need mathematical operations.

VALUETOTEXT Function

The VALUETOTEXT function converts any Excel value into its text representation. It handles numbers, booleans, text, and errors by transforming them into readable text strings using either a concise or strict formatting approach.