Excel tutorials, functions and advanced formula examples
Find and replace strings in Excel using regular expressions
When it comes to changing one piece of information to another, Microsoft Excel provides a number of options to choose from. Why would one want to complicate things with regexes? Because Excel's standard features can only process an exact string that you specify. Continue reading
Excel Data Validation using regular expressions
When it comes to restricting user input in Excel worksheets, Data Validation is indispensable. It can do anything you can possibly imagine. What if I want to allow entering only valid email addresses or strings that match a specific pattern? Alas, that's not possible. Regex you say? Hmm… that might work! Continue reading
Regex Match in Excel: regular expression matching with examples
When you need to find a certain value in a range of cells, you use the Excel MATCH function. When looking for a specific string in a cell, the FIND and SEARCH functions come in handy. And how do you know if a cell contains information that matches a given pattern? Obviously, by using regular expressions. Continue reading
CONCAT function in Excel to concatenate text strings
Traditionally, string concatenation in Excel is done with the help of the CONCATENATE function or the ampersand symbol. In Excel 2019 and Excel 365, these old-school methods give way to CONCAT - a newer and improved function to combine text from multiple cells into one cell. Continue reading
How to add text or character to every cell in Excel
When working with text data in Excel, you may sometimes need to add the same text to existing cells to make things clearer. For example, you might want to put some prefix at the beginning of each cell, insert a special symbol at the end, or place certain text before a formula. Continue reading
How to convert table to a normal range in Excel and turn data range into a table
Table is one of the most useful things in Excel that makes managing, calculating and updating data a lot easier. Under certain circumstances, however, a table format may not suite your needs. This short tutorial will teach you how to turn a table into a normal range without losing your data. Continue reading
How to remove characters/text from string in Excel
In this tutorial, we will look at the most common cases of removing characters in Excel. Want to delete specific text from multiple cells? Or maybe strip the first or last character in a string? Or perhaps remove only a specific occurrence of a given character? Whatever your task is, you will find more than one solution for it! Continue reading
How to remove special (unwanted) characters from string in Excel
When importing data to Excel from somewhere else, a whole lot of special characters may appear in your worksheets. Even more frustrating is that some characters are invisible, which produces extra white space before, after or inside text strings. Continue reading
Video: How to count colored cells in Google Sheets
If you haven't tried our Function by Color add-on for Google Sheets yet, you will be pleasantly surprised. It calculates values based on their font, fill, or both colors using 13 aggregation functions. Today's video will show you how it works. Continue reading
How to view shared files in OneDrive and stop sharing
OneDrive is a perfect place for sharing your files and collaborating with your colleagues. After someone has shared something with you, the next question is - where do I find those files? Continue reading
How to delete text before or after a certain character in Excel
In the recent couple of articles, we've looked at different ways to remove characters from strings in Excel. Today, we'll investigate one more use case - how to delete everything before or after a specific character. Continue reading
How to remove first (left) or last (right) characters in Excel
When working with unstructured text data, you often need to parse it to retrieve relevant information. This article will teach you a few simple ways to remove any number of characters from the left or right side of a text string. Continue reading
How to share files securely with OneDrive
There are a few different ways to share documents on OneDrive, and you may be asking yourself which is the best one. For the most part, the answer depends on the situation and your ultimate goals. But I can show you the most secure way. Continue reading
How to share OneDrive files and folders
Like most other online storages, OneDrive was designed with collaboration in mind, and they strived to make the sharing process easy and intuitive. However, there are some caveats to take notice of, especially when adding and syncing shared files to your computer. Continue reading
Find and replace special characters in Google Sheets
Getting tired of all those smart quotes, accented letters, and other unwanted special characters in Google Sheets? We have a few ideas on how to replace them effortlessly. Continue reading
How to remove text and leave numbers in Excel or vice versa
Imagine this: you receive raw data for analysis and find out that numbers are mixed with text in one column. In most cases, it will certainly be more convenient to have them in separate columns for closer examination. Continue reading
Video: remove the same characters and substrings from multiple Google Sheets cells
Today's video is all about getting rid of unwanted text from several Google Sheets cells at once. You'll see how our Remove Text add-on removes specific characters and various substrings from different positions in cells. Continue reading
How to remove table formatting in Excel
By default, Excel tables are equipped with a number of great features including predefined table styles. In some situations, however, you may want to remove formatting keeping all other functionality of a table. This tutorial will teach you how to quickly do that. Continue reading
Extract data from Google Sheets cells: text, numbers, URLs, hyperlinks, email addresses, dates, and time
This next bit of our operations with text in spreadsheets is devoted to extraction. Find out ways to extract various data – text, characters, numbers, URLs, email addresses, date & time, etc. – from various positions in multiple Google Sheets cells at once. Continue reading
How to highlight duplicate text strings or words in Excel cell
Excel Conditional Formatting makes it possible to highlight duplicates in every possible way you can think of. But, as usual, there is a "but" - conditional formatting rules work on a cell level while you may want to highlight duplicate text rather than entire cells. This can only be done with macros. Continue reading
