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
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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:
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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 Tools > Delete Characters, see screenshot:
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
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