---
title: "Remove characters from text in Excel"  
description: "Remove characters from text in Excel"  
author: "AVADHESH PATEL"  
published: 2013-03-27  
updated: 2019-09-07  
canonical: https://www.mindstick.com/articles/1171/remove-characters-from-text-in-excel  
category: "excel"  
tags: ["excel"]  
reading_time: 2 minutes  

---

# Remove characters from text in Excel

In this [article](https://yourviews.mindstick.com/view/81489/kashmir-now-after-an-year-of-abrogation-of-article-370) I have described how to split a text form text-[column in excel](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/96536/how-can-you-resize-the-column-in-excel). There are several ways to remove [characters](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/42112/who-is-the-originator-of-avengers-characters) from text. For removing text from column in Excel, Excel provides two [functions](https://www.mindstick.com/forum/34086/jquery-callback-functions) LEFT/LEFTB and RIGHT/RIGHTB.\

LEFT returns the first [character](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/23551/an-investigate-distinctive-seafood-restaurant-for-your-image-stamp-character) or characters in a text string, based on the number of characters you specify. LEFT always counts each character, whether single-byte or double-byte, as 1, no matter what the default [language setting](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/31022/how-to-change-the-language-setting-of-my-google-chrome) is.

LEFTB returns the first character or characters in a text string, based on the number of bytes you specify. LEFTB counts each double-byte character as 2 when you have enabled the [editing](https://www.mindstick.com/startup/27/photoroom-the-ai-powered-app-transforming-photo-and-video-editing) of a language that [supports](https://www.mindstick.com/blog/12043/how-to-create-a-killer-mobile-app-that-supports-your-brand) DBCS and then set it [as the default](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/109628/how-to-set-bing-as-the-default-seek-engine-in-microsoft-edge) language. Otherwise, LEFTB counts each character as 1.

##### Syntax

LEFT(text,num_chars)

LEFTB(text,num_bytes)

**RIGHT** returns the last character or characters in a text string, based on the number of characters you specify. RIGHT always counts each character, whether single-byte or double-byte, as 1, no matter what the default language setting is.

**RIGHTB** returns the last character or characters in a text string, based on the number of bytes you specify. RIGHTB counts each double-byte character as 2 when you have enabled the editing of a language that supports DBCS and then set it as the default language. Otherwise, RIGHTB counts each character as 1.

##### Syntax

RIGHT(text,num_chars)

RIGHTB(text,num_bytes)

##### Example are given below

![Remove characters from text in Excel](https://www.mindstick.com/mindstickarticle/3e9f26ed-e4c8-4f3a-a5d9-566e7c60727d/images/0360743d-dace-438c-8c06-2f6580d47539.png)

---

Original Source: https://www.mindstick.com/articles/1171/remove-characters-from-text-in-excel

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