As an Excel consultant, I often get asked about removing unwanted characters from spreadsheets. Before suggesting a solution, however, it’s important to clarify the purpose of the removal and the intended outcome:
- Why are the characters considered unnecessary, and what exactly makes them unwanted?
- What does the deletion procedure mean in this case? Will we actually delete them, replace them with other symbols, or maybe move them to another column?
- Does it really make sense to delete only the characters themselves? Or should we instead remove the words that contain them, or even the entire contents of the cells?
- Wouldn’t it sometimes be easier to extract the needed characters instead of deleting the unwanted ones?
Depending on your answers, there are multiple possible solutions. Sometimes simple Excel functions are enough, sometimes regular expressions are required, and in many cases the best option is a ready-made software solution.
Delete characters by their type
A common request is to remove characters by type. Unfortunately, Excel doesn’t provide a native way to delete whole sets of characters by attribute. The built-in Find & Replace tool works, but it can only remove one character or substring at a time. Still, with the right approach, you can get the desired result.
Delete everything except letters and numbers (remove punctuation)
Removing punctuation or any characters that are not letters and numbers can be a tough task, since there are hundreds of such symbols. Check out this guide on removing punctuation in Excel for a detailed solution.
Extra spaces
Repeated spaces between words or spaces at the beginning or end of a cell are also considered unnecessary. The remove extra spaces tool also helps get rid of them quickly.
Unnecessary characters on the right or left
If the unwanted characters are located only at the start or end of the text, you can cut them off:
- by position (e.g., remove the first or last N characters), or
- by a specific boundary character or substring.
Learn how to:
If there is a specific boundary character:
- remove everything in front of it,
- remove everything after it.
Numbers
Sometimes, the unwanted characters are digits. Since there are only ten digits, you might want a faster way than replacing each one. Here’s a guide on removing digits from text in Excel.
Letters (Latin characters)
Similarly, it’s not easy to remove all alphabet letters at once, since there are 26 basic English letters plus many diacritic variations. See the step-by-step guide on deleting Latin characters in Excel.
Delete everything except…
In many cases, the task is to remove all characters except certain ones. This is basically the opposite approach: instead of deleting what you don’t need, you extract what you do need.
Delete all but digits (extract numbers)
Phone numbers, postal codes, article numbers, IP addresses… Often the problem is the presence of extra characters besides digits. Learn how to extract numbers from Excel cells.
Delete all but letters (extract letters)
In other cases, you need only letters, with numbers and punctuation considered redundant. This applies to Latin or any other alphabet characters. See how to extract letters in Excel.
Other operations with characters in Excel
Removing characters isn’t always the only or best option. Sometimes you may need to detect their presence, extract them, or replace them with other symbols. The corresponding guides can help:
Excel also supports the power of regular expressions. Whether it’s letters, digits, punctuation, or special symbols — regex can handle any kind of data.
This post is also available in RU.