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Excel SUBSTITUTE Formula

You are here: Home / Excel Formulas / Excel SUBSTITUTE Formula
Excel SUBSTITUTE Formula
July 17, 2013 by Mynda Treacy

The Excel SUBSTITUTE function replaces new_text for old_text in a text string.

The Excel SUBSTITUTE Function Syntax is:

SUBSTITUTE(text,old_text,new_text,[instance_num])

The arguments can be explained as:

  • text – cell containing the characters you want to replace.
  • old_text – the text to be replaced.
  • new_text – the new text you want inserted.
  • Instance_num – if omitted, it replaces every occurrence of the old_text; Otherwise, only the specified occurrence of the old_text is replaced in the text string .

Note: all arguments are required except those with [square brackets] which are optional.

SUBSTITUTE Formula Example

Excel Substitute Formula

Taking the formula displayed in cell B18 in English it reads:

Locate the text in cell A18, and replace the 15, with 20.

More Excek SUBSTITUTE Function Examples

Here I nest SUBSTITUTE functions to replace two different characters at once.

As an alternative to SUBSTITUTE you can use the CLEAN formula with the CHAR function to remove the non-printing ASCII characters 0 to 32.

Excel SUBSTITUTE Formula

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mynda treacy microsoft mvpHi, I'm Mynda Treacy and I run MOTH with my husband, Phil. Through our blog, webinars, YouTube channel and courses we hope we can help you learn Excel, Power Pivot and DAX, Power Query, Power BI, and Excel Dashboards.

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