Excel Formula: Remove first N characters from cell
Here it introduces two formulas to remove the first n characters from a cell in Excel, one uses the REPLACE function, the other one uses the combination of RIGHT function and LEN function.
Formula 1 Remove first n characters by REPLACE function
Generic formula:
| REPLACE(text,1,n_char,"") |
Arguments
| Text: the value or cell you want to remove its first n characters. |
| Nth_char: the number of characters you want to remove from left side of the text. |
How this formula work
For instance, one column (Column B) contains data, one column (Column C) contains the number of characters you need to remove, and now you can use below formula in column D to get the result.
| =REPLACE(B3,1,C3,"") |
Press Enter key to remove characters from B3, if you need, drag fill handle down to cells to apply this formula.
Explanation
REPLACE function: the REPLACE function replaces the old text with a new text. Here the formula =REPLACE(B3,1,C3,"") can be seen as =REPLACE(B3,1,1,""), which replaces the first one character of text in B3 with empty.
Formula 2 Remove first n characters by RIGHT and LEN functions
Generic formula:
| =RIGHT(text,LEN(text)-n_char) |
Arguments
| Text: the value or cell you want to remove its first n characters. |
| Nth_char: the number of characters you want to remove from left side of the text. |
How this formula work
Example: remove the first n characters from text in B3, please use below formula:
| =RIGHT(B3,LEN(B3)-C3) |
Press Enter key to remove characters from B3, if you need, drag fill handle down to cells to apply this formula.
Explanation
LEN function: the LEN function gets the number of characters in a text string. Here LEN(B3) gets the length of cell B3, and returns 8.
RIGHT function: the RIGHT function extracts characters from right side of a text string. Here the formula
=RIGHT(B3,LEN(B3)-C3)
=RIGHT(B3,8-3)
=RIGHT(B3,5)
Then extracts five characters from right side of the text in cell B3.
Sample File
Click to download sample fileRelative Formulas
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