Excel how-to guide

How to substitute replace text in Excel

Remove dashes from phone numbers, replace a misspelled product name across a column, or swap a delimiter character.

beginnerText ManipulationSUBSTITUTE reference

Step-by-step instructions

How to substitute replace text — 3 steps

Reference the cell containing the text you want to modify.

Enter the exact text you want to find as the second argument — it is case-sensitive.

Enter the replacement text as the third argument. Use an empty string to delete the found text.

Example data

Common mistakes

SUBSTITUTE is case-sensitive

SUBSTITUTE("Hello","hello","Hi") returns "Hello" unchanged because the capitalisation does not match. Match the exact case or use LOWER/UPPER first.

Only want to replace the first occurrence

Add a fourth argument of 1 to replace only the first match — for example, SUBSTITUTE(A2,"o","0",1).

FAQ

How is SUBSTITUTE different from REPLACE?

SUBSTITUTE finds specific text regardless of position. REPLACE operates on a fixed character position and length regardless of content.

Need a custom variation?

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