Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Stripping the Last Nth Characters From a String

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Stripping the Last Nth Characters From a String

Here are formulas to strip away the last Nth characters from a string, where N is the count of characters you want to strip. Notice that if you have a list of items with varying locations of the character of interest, the formula in column E is a one-size fits all, in cases like this when only one such character would be present in the string.

The formula in cell B3 copied down to B5 is =LEFT(A3,LEN(A3)-4).


The formula in cell C3 copied down to C5 is =LEFT(A3,LEN(A3)-5).


The formula in cell D3 copied down to D5 is =LEFT(A3,LEN(A3)-6).


The formula in cell E3 copied down to E5 is =LEFT(A3,SEARCH(".",A3)-1).