How to remove text after a specific character

We talked that how to remove all characters before the first match of the comma character in the previous post. And this post will teach you how to remove text after the first occurrence of the comma character in a text string in excel.

Remove text after a specific character

If you want to remove all characters after the first match of the comma character in a text string in Cell B1, you can create an excel formula based on the LEFT function and FIND function.

You can use the FIND function to get the position of the first occurrence of the comma character in a text in B1, then using the LEFT function to extract the left-most characters before the first comma. So you can remove the text after the first comma character in text. You can use the following formula:

=LEFT(B1,FIND(",",B1)-1)

Let’s see how this formula works:

 

=FIND(“,”,B1)-1

remove text after first comma11

This formula returns the position of the first match of the comma character in a text string in Cell B1, then subtract 1 by the position number to get the length of substring before the first comma, so it returns 5. And the returned value goes into the LEFT function as its num_chars argument.

 

=LEFT(B1,FIND(“,”,B1)-1)

remove text after first comma1

This formula extracts the left-most 5 characters from a text string in Cell B1.

So you can see that all characters after the first comma character in a text string are removed.

Remove Text after a specific character using FIND&Select command

You can also use the Find and Replace command to remove text after a specified character, just refer to the following steps:

1# Click “HOME“->”Find&Select”->”Replace…”, then the window of the Find and Replace will appear.

Remove text using Find Select command1

Remove text using Find Select command1

2# click “Replace” Tab, then type  ,* into the Find what: text box, and leave blank in the Replace with: text box.

remove text after first comma2

3# click “Replace All

remove text after first comma3

you will see that all characters after the first comma character are removed.


Related Formulas

Related Functions

  • Excel LEFT function
    The Excel LEFT function returns a substring (a specified number of the characters) from a text string, starting from the leftmost character.The LEFT function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function.The syntax of the LEFT function is as below:= LEFT(text,[num_chars])…t)…
  • Excel FIND function
    The Excel FIND function returns the position of the first text string (sub string) within another text string.The syntax of the FIND function is as below:= FIND(find_text, within_text,[start_num])…

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