Microsoft Excel 365 Bible

CHAPTER 12Using Formulas to Manipulate Text

IN THIS CHAPTER

1. Seeing how Excel handles text entered into cells
2. Exploring Excel worksheet functions that handle text
3. Getting examples of advanced text formulas

Often, the work you do with Excel not only involves calculating numbers but also includes transforming and shaping data to fit your data models. Many of these activities include manipulating text strings. This chapter will highlight some of the common text transformation exercises an Excel analyst performs and, in the process, give you a sense of some of the text-based functions that Excel has to offer.

Working with Text

When you enter data into a cell, Excel immediately goes to work and determines whether you're entering a formula, a number (including a date or time), or anything else. That “anything else” is considered text.

NOTE

You may hear the term string used instead of text. You can use these terms interchangeably. Sometimes they even appear together, as in text string.

A single cell can hold up to 32,000 characters, but Excel is not a word processor, and there's no reason why anyone would need to come even close to that number of characters in a cell.

If you need to display lots of text in a worksheet, consider using a text box. Choose Insert ➪ Text ➪ Text Box, click the worksheet to create the text box, and then start typing. Working with large amounts of text in a text box is easier than editing cells. In addition, you can easily move, resize, or ...