Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings

When working with text data in Excel, you may encounter strings containing information enclosed in parentheses () or brackets [] that you need to remove for data cleaning or formatting purposes. Manually deleting this text can be time-consuming, especially for large datasets. Fortunately, there are several efficient methods to remove text within parentheses or brackets in Excel. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for each method to help you clean your data quickly and effectively.

• Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings with formula
• Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings with Kutools AI
• Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings with User Defined Function

Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings with formula

You can create a formula based on the SUBSTITUTE, MID FIND and LEN functions for dealing with this job, the generic syntax is:

• text: The text string or cell reference that you want to use.

Please copy or enter the following formula into a blank cell where you want to get the result:

And then, drag the fill handle down to the cells you want to apply this formula, and all texts within the parentheses including the parentheses have been removed, see screenshot:

Explanation of the formula:

1. MID(LEFT(A2,FIND(")",A2)),FIND("(",A2),LEN(A2)): This MID function is recognized as the old_text argument within the SUBSTITUTE function.

• LEFT(A2,FIND(")",A2)): This part of the formula is used to extract the text string from left to the right parenthesis in cell A2, and you will get the result as this: “Tom Hill (Houston Texas)”. This will be recognized as the text argument within the MID function.
• FIND("(",A2): This FIND function will return the position of the left parenthesis from cell A2, the result is: 10. And this part formula is recognized as the start_num argument within the MID function.
• LEN(A2): The LEN function will get the total number of the characters in cell A2, and the result is: 27. This part is recognized as the num_chars argument of the MID function.
• MID(LEFT(A2,FIND(")",A2)),FIND("(",A2),LEN(A2))= MID("Tom Hill (Houston Texas)",10,27): This MID function is used to extract the characters from the text string which are returned by the LEFT function, start from the tenth character with a length of 27 characters, and you will get the result as this: “(Houston Texas)”.

2. SUBSTITUTE(A2,MID(LEFT(A2,FIND(")",A2)),FIND("(",A2),LEN(A2)),"")= SUBSTITUTE(A2, "(Houston Texas)",""): At last, this SUBSTITUTE function is used to replace the old text that returned by the MID function with nothing in the text string of cell A2.

Notes:

1. If the part of text enclosed with the brackets, you just need to replace the parentheses with the brackets as below formula:

2. If there is no parentheses in the cell value, after applying the above formula, an error will be displayed, in this case, you just need to enclose the above formula into the IFERROR function:

Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings with Kutools AI

Cleaning up data has never been easier! With Kutools AI Aide, you can instantly remove all text within parentheses from your Excel dataset. This intelligent tool automates the process, saving you from manual editing and ensuring accuracy in large datasets. Kutools AI Aide makes it effortless to clean and format your information with just a few clicks.

After installing Kutools For Excel, please click Kutools > AI Aide to open the Kutools AI Aide pane.

1. Select the data range that you want to remove text within parentheses;
2. Then, type the requirement in the chat box: such as:
   Remove text within parentheses in selected range
3. And then, press Enter key or click the Send button. Kutools AI will analyze the question, after finishing, please click Execute button to get the result.

Remove text within parentheses or brackets from text strings with User Defined Function

If there are two or more parentheses within the text string, the above formula only can be used to remove text in the first parentheses. To remove all texts in multiple parentheses as the following screenshot shown, how could you achieve it in Excel?

In this case, a User Defined Function can help you to remove all texts in the parentheses. Please do with the following steps:

1. Hold down the Alt + F11 keys in Excel, and it opens the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Click Insert > Module, and paste the following VBA code in the Module Window.

Function remtxt(ByVal str As String) As String
'updateby Extendoffice
  While InStr(str, "(") > 0 And InStr(str, ")") > InStr(str, "(")
    str = Left(str, InStr(str, "(") - 1) & Mid(str, InStr(str, ")") + 1)
  Wend
  remtxt = Trim(str)
End Function

3. Then, go back to the worksheet where you want to use, and enter this formula into a blank cell: =remtxt(A2), then drag the fill handle down to the cells you want to apply this formula, all the texts within the multiple parentheses including the parentheses have been removed at once, see screenshot:

Relative functions used:

More articles: