You can do so with the function ISBLANK(), combined with an IF function: =IF(ISBLANK(A1),'',LEFT(A1,3)). Pro tip 4: If you have empty cells in your column, and you want them stay empty after using a function like LEFT(), you’ll need to check for these empty cells first. For example, =TEXT(A1, 'dd-mmm-yyyy') will transform the date format 1st of November 2019 to a text cell with the content 0. Instead of MM/DD/YYYY, you can use any combination of these date codes and /, -, a space, etc. To do so, use the formula =TEXT(A1, 'MM/DD/YYYY'). If you want to apply formulas like LEFT() to your dates, it helps to transform them into a text format first. Pro tip 3: You can extract content with LEFT(), RIGHT(), and MID() not just from text cells, but also from number and date cells. To combine the column US from your cell A1 and TX from B1 with a hyphen, use ampersands and write =A1&'-'&B1. Pro tip 2: Now that you learned to separate text, you can also bring it together again. This formula first removes the last bracket and then splits the remaining cell content on (. To separate the cell Datawrapper (Software) into the two cells Datawrapper and Software, you could use the formula =SPLIT(LEFT(A5,LEN(A5)-1),'('. So =LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-2) extracts the entire text in a cell except the last two characters. For example, the formula =LEN() gives back the number of characters in a cell. Pro tip 1: You can combine formulas to extract characters at all sorts of crazy positions. To apply the changes to the cells below, drag down the blue square.

=MID(B1,4,2) to extract the 2 characters following the 4th character in B1. =RIGHT(B1,8) to extract the last 8 characters of the cell B1. =LEFT(B1,2) to extract the first 2 characters of the cell B1. Sometimes you don’t have clear separator characters, but just want to extract the first or last characters of a cell.

Excel text to column formula