Format MAC addresses in cells by adding colon symbol in Excel
Imagine you have a worksheet filled with a list of alphanumeric strings, and your goal is to transform each alphanumeric value in these strings into MAC addresses by inserting colons, as illustrated in the following screenshot. How can you efficiently achieve this? This tutorial provides straightforward methods to help you tackle this challenge.
Format number and text as mac address with formula
Easily format number and text as mac address with Kutools for Excel
Format number and text as mac address with VBA
Format number and text as mac address with formula
- Select a blank cell, enter the following formula and then press the Enter key to get the first result. See screenshot:
=LEFT(A2,2)&":"&MID(A2,3,2)&":"&MID(A2,5,2)&":"&MID(A2,7,2)&":"&MID(A2,9,2)&":"&RIGHT(A2,2)
Note: In the formula, A2 is the first cell in the list of strings to be formatted as mac format. - Select the first result cell, drag it's Fill Handle down to get the rest of mac addresses. See screenshot:
Easily format number and text as mac address with Kutools for Excel
The formula provided in the method above does not look very easy to grasp. If you are looking for a simpler solution, then the Add Text utility of Kutoos for Excel is highly recommended. Using this utility, you can easily add colons to cells at specified positions to quickly format the steing in those cells as mac addresses. Please follow the steos below.
After downloading and installing Kutools for Excel, go to the Kutools tab, select Text > Add Text to open the Add Text dialog box, and then configure as follow.
- Select the cells that contain the strings that need to be formatted as mac addresses.
- Enter a colon in the Text box.
- Select the Specify position option, and then enter the numbers that represent the locations where you want to add the colons.
Tip: In this case, I need to add a colon after every two numbers in cells, so I enter 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 separated by commas. See screenshot:
- Click the OK button.
Result
Strings in the selected cells are now formatted as mac address as shown in the screenshot below.
- The Preview box generates a preview of the results to help you see them in advance.
- To use this feature, you should install Kutools for Excel first, please click to download and have a 30-day free trial now.
- This feature collects other useful options, to know more about this feature, please visit this page: Quickly add text or character to multiple cells in Excel.
- This feature can handle multiple ranges at the same time.
Format number and text as mac address with VBA
You also can apply VBA code to format number and text as mac address in Excel. Please do as follows.
- Press the Alt + F11 keys simultaneously to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
- In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, click Insert > Module. Then copy below VBA code into the new Module code window.
VBA code: Format numbers as mac addresses in cells
Sub FormatMAC() 'Updated by Extendoffice 20231103 Dim I As Long Dim xRg As Range Dim xCell As Range Dim xVal As String Dim xStr As String On Error Resume Next Set xRg = Application.InputBox("Please select range:", "Kutools for Excel", Selection.Address, , , , , 8) If xRg Is Nothing Then Exit Sub On Error GoTo 0 For Each xCell In xRg xVal = xCell.Value If InStr(xVal, ":") > 0 Then xVal = Replace(xVal, ":", "") End If For I = 1 To Int(Len(xVal) / 2) xStr = xStr & Mid(xVal, 2 * I - 1, 2) & ":" Next xCell.Value = Left(xStr, Len(xStr) - 1) 'Remove the last ":" xStr = "" Next End Sub
- In the opening Kutools for Excel dialog box, select the cells that contain the strings you want to format as mac address, and then click the OK button.
Then you can see the selected cells are formatted as mac address as shown in the screenshot below.
Related articles:
- How to add text in middle of selected cells in Excel?
- How to add comma at end of cell/text in Excel?
- How to add a character before each word in a cell in Excel?
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