18. Text Functions

Join Strings | Left | Right | Mid | Len | Find | Substitute

Excel has many functions to offer when it comes to manipulating text strings.

Join Strings

To join strings, use the & operator.

Note: instead of using the & operator, use the CONCATENATE function in Excel.

Left

To extract the leftmost characters from a string, use the LEFT function.

Right

To extract the rightmost characters from a string, use the RIGHT function.

Mid

To extract a substring, starting in the middle of a string, use the MID function.

Note: started at position 5 (p) with length 3.

Len

To get the length of a string, use the LEN function.

Note: space (position 8) included!

Find

To find the position of a substring in a string, use the FIND function.

Note: string “am” found at position 3. Visit our page about the FIND function for more examples.

Substitute

To replace existing text with new text in a string, use the SUBSTITUTE function.

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