How to delete everything after a character in Excel

In Excel, deleting everything after a specific character refers to removing all the text or data that appears in a cell after a certain character or symbol. Deleting everything after a character in Excel holds significant importance for various data-related tasks. It aids in data cleaning and standardization by removing extraneous information, resulting in consistent and accurate datasets.

Our dataset contains information about employees of a company residing in the same area. However, we only require the house numbers and wish to remove the rest of the address details. To accomplish this, we can use the “Find and Select” option in Excel to locate the comma (“,”) character and delete everything that appears after it, effectively extracting only the house numbers from the addresses.

Method 1: Delete everything after a character using Shortcut keys

Step 1 – Select the range of Data

  • Select the range of cells that contain the data to be deleted

Step 2 – Press the CTRL+H

  • After selecting the range of cells, press the CTRL+H, and a Find and Replace dialog box will appear

Step 3 – Type the Character and Steric Sign

  • In the dialog box, type the character along with the Steric sign in the box next to the Find What option
  • Here the Character is comma(,) so we typed (,*) in the box

Step 4 – Click on the Replace All option

  • After typing the Steric sign, click on the Replace All option and a dialog box for confirmation will appear

Step 5 – Click on OK

  • Click on OK in the confirmation dialog box to get the required result

Method 2: Delete everything after a character using Find and Select option

Step 1 – Select the range of Data

  • Select the range of cells that contain the data to be deleted

Step 2 – Click on the Find and Select option

  • After selecting the range of cells, click on the Find and Select option in the Editing group. of the Home tab and a drop-down menu will appear.

Step 3 – Click on Replace option

  • Click on the Replace option from the dropdown menu and a dialog box will appear

Step 4 – Type the Character and Steric Sign

  • In the dialog box, type the character along with the Steric sign in the box next to the Find What option
  • Here the Character is comma(,) so we typed (,*) in the box

Step 5 – Click on the Replace All option

  • After typing the Steric sign, click on the Replace All option and a dialog box for confirmation will appear

Step 6 – Click on OK

  • Click on OK in the confirmation dialog box to get the required result