How to Split the Text String By a Specified Character in Excel Office 365?
Tags: excelpreface, splittextstring, excelbasics, exceltutorials
Published: 2021-01-18 04:01:51

---
title: How to Split the Text String By a Specified Character in Excel Office 365?
published: true
date: 2021-01-11 04:43:43 UTC
tags: ExcelPreface,splittextstring,ExcelBasics,ExcelTutorials
canonical_url: https://geekexcel.com/split-text-string-by-specified-character-excel/
---

When you want to split a text string by a specified character, such as a hyphen, comma, you can use the **[FIND](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-find-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)**, **[LEFT](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-left-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)**, and [**RIGHT**](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-right-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/) functions. This page describes **how to split a string by a specified character in Excel**. Let’s see them below!! Get an official version of ** MS Excel**  from the following link: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/excel](https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/excel)
## Formula to Split the Text String:

There are three types of formulas available to split the text string by a special character.

- Use the below formula to extract all the characters to the left of the character.

**=[LEFT](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-left-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)(B1,[FIND](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-find-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)(“-“,B1,1)-1)**

- In case, you need to find the right side text from the given string, use the below formula.

**=[RIGHT](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-right-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)(B1,[LEN](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-len-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)(B1)-[FIND](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-find-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)(“-“,B1))**

## Description:

- **FIND** – The Excel **[FIND function](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-find-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)** is used to ** find out the one text string ** inside the other.
- **LEFT** – In Excel, this function will extract digits from the numbers starting from the left side. Read more on the **[LEFT function](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-left-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)**.
- **RIGHT** – This function extracts the characters from the right side of a text string. Read more on the **[RIGHT Function](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-right-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/)**.

## Practical Examples:

Assume that you have a list of student’s names with the corresponding height in a range, and you need to extract the name and height into separate columns. Let’s follow the below steps

- First, you need to give your input range.

![Input Range](https://eadn-wc04-371788.nxedge.io/cdn/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Input-Range.png)<figcaption id="caption-attachment-20757">Input Range</figcaption>

- Then, you need to enter the left function formula in the **[formula bar section](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-formula-bar-for-various-purpose-in-excel-365/)** to extract the names from the list.
- In the formula, the **[FIND](https://geekexcel.com/how-to-use-find-function-in-microsoft-excel-365/) function** will locate the position of the first dash character (“-“) from the selected cell.
- The **LEFT function** will extract all the characters from the left side including the special character.
- On the **FIND function,** you need to subtract 1, to remove the dash character from the result of the **LEFT Function**.

![LEFT formula](https://eadn-wc04-371788.nxedge.io/cdn/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Enter-the-formula-1.png)<figcaption id="caption-attachment-20758">LEFT formula</figcaption>

- Similarly, you can use the **RIGHT** and **LEN** Functions instead of the **LEFT** function to get the student’s height from the list.

![RIGHT Formula](https://eadn-wc04-371788.nxedge.io/cdn/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/RIGHT-Formula.png)<figcaption id="caption-attachment-20760">RIGHT Formula</figcaption>

- Finally, you can get the splitter text string as per the below screenshot.

![Result](https://eadn-wc04-371788.nxedge.io/cdn/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/excel_EllBTFcNt3.png)<figcaption id="caption-attachment-20761">Result</figcaption>

## Conclusion:

Hope you understood the simple steps to **split the text string by a specified character in Excel**. Let me know if you have any **doubts** regarding this article or any other Excel/VBA topic. Click here to know more about **[Geek Excel](https://geekexcel.com/)**.

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