Excel Worksheet Tips: Remove First and Last Character From a String

Excel Worksheet Tips: Remove First and Last Character From a String

Perhaps you have a list of data that you wish to remove the first and last characters. For example, there is a list of values similar to these:

“Data”
“Trial”
“Test”

What you are after is the strings inside the inverted commas. You could go through each entry and edit them, or using the formula below:

=TRIM(LEFT(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1-1),LEN(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-1))-1))

Using this formula, it will format the results to look like this:

Data
Trial
Test

If you wish to remove two characters from the ends, change the -1 values to -2.

 

Or perhaps you only want to remove the FIRST character. If so, use the following code:

=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-1)

Or to remove the LAST character, use the following code:

=LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-1)

 

Useful!

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IT