How to remove non-alpha characters from cells in Excel?

For example, you have a range data such as Jacob "001" @#$%, and you want to remove all the non-alpha characters from the string to keep it as Jacob. In Excel, how can you remove all non-alpha characters from cells quickly?

Remove non-alpha characters from cells with VBA code

Quickly remove non-alpha characters from cells with Kutools for Excel

Remove non-alpha characters from cells with VBA code

With VBA code, you can remove non-alpha characters and only keep the alpha characters (a-z) in the cells as the following steps:

1. Highlight the range you want to remove all non-alpha characters.

2. Click Developer > Visual Basic, a new Microsoft Visual Basic for applications window will be displayed, click Insert > Module, and then input the following code in the Module:

VBA: remove all non-alpha characters from cells

Sub RemoveNotAlphas()
'Updateby2014128
Dim Rng As Range
Dim WorkRng As Range
On Error Resume Next
xTitleId = "KutoolsforExcel"
Set WorkRng = Application.Selection
Set WorkRng = Application.InputBox("Range", xTitleId, WorkRng.Address, Type:=8)
For Each Rng In WorkRng
    xOut = ""
    For i = 1 To Len(Rng.Value)
        xTemp = Mid(Rng.Value, i, 1)
        If xTemp Like "[a-z.]" Or xTemp Like "[A-Z.]" Then
            xStr = xTemp
        Else
            xStr = ""
        End If
        xOut = xOut & xStr
    Next i
    Rng.Value = xOut
Next
End Sub

3. And then click  button to run the code. A dialog is displayed on the screen for you to select a range that you want to remove all the non-alpha characters. See screenshot:

4. Then click OK,  all of the non-alpha characters have been removed. See screenshot:

Quickly remove non-alpha characters from cells with Kutools for Excel

If you don’t want to remove all non-alpha characters by using a VBA macro, you may prefer to use the Delete Characters tool for Kutools for Excel.

Kutools for Excel: with more than 300 handy Excel add-ins, free to try with no limitation in 30 days. Get it Now

After installing Kutools for Excel, you can easily and comfortably remove all non-alpha characters from a range of cells.

1. Select the range that you want to remove the non-alpha characters.

2. Click Kutools > Text > Delete Characters.

3. A Delete Characters dialog box will appear. Then check Non-alpha characters option in Delete Characters dialog box. At the same time, you can preview the result from the Preview Pane. See screenshot:

4. And then click OK or Apply. All of the non-alpha characters will be removed.

This utility also can delete numeric characters, non-numeric characters, non-printing characters and so on. For more detailed information about Delete Characters, please visit Delete Characters feature description.

Relative articles:

• Remove alpha characters from cells
• Remove non numeric characters from cells
• Remove numeric characters from cells
• Remove non-printable characters from cells
• Quickly remove line breaks
• Remove non-alphanumeric characters