Although Excel is mostly associated with numerical data and analysis, it’s also really useful for managing text based data. Text functions allow you to change the format of text, combine different text strings, extract parts of a text string, substitute one text string for another, and more!

Who is this class for?

This classed is designed for any Excel user (beginner to advanced) who wants to learn about text functions. Text functions are useful for a wide range of tasks and professions, although are usually not the most common functions for Excel users to learn, so if you don’t think they could be useful for you to learn, you might be surprised!

If you’re completely new to Excel, you’ll benefit from taking my ‘Excel for Beginners: Learn the Essentials in 50 Minutes’ class before taking this class.

What will I learn?

In just 30 minutes, this class covers the following topics:

Changing Text Formatting: Useful Tips
How to Extract Text with LEFT
Combining Text with CONCAT
Combining Text: CONCAT or CONCATENATE?
Combining Text with TEXTJOIN
Extracting Text with LEFT, RIGHT, and MID
Searching and Extracting Text with MID and SEARCH
Changing Text with SUBSTITUTE
How to Convert data to Text: A Useful Tip

You will learn

Download the ‘Excel Text Functions’ file and complete the following activities:

In the first tab, use a CONCAT formula to create the sentence: “This [product] is made of [material] and is [colour].” Reference the cells when referring to the product, material, and colour, and fill your formula down to create four sentences.
In the second tab, use a LEFT function to extract the price (e.g. “$27”), and fill the formula down to get the price for all five items.
In the third tab, use a TEXT function to get the full text month (e.g. “February”) for the date, and fill the formula down to get this for all the dates.
Bonus task: repeat task two with a formula that uses the SEARCH and MID functions instead of LEFT.