Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Replacing Dashes with Periods.
If you have a need to normalize the appearance of your data, you might want to replace any dashes in a text string with periods. For instance, if you have a phone number such as "123-555-1212" you might want to change it to "123.555.1212". This is easy to do using the SUBSTITUTE function:
=SUBSTITUTE(A7,"-",".")
The result is that any dashes appearing in the string in cell A7 are replaced with periods.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11028) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Replacing Dashes with Periods.
Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!
When analyzing data, you may need to distill groupings from that data. This tip examines how you can use formulas and ...
Discover MoreOne of the staples of high school algebra classes is the quadratic equation. If you need to solve such equations in ...
Discover MoreAutoFill is a great feature. It can detect patterns and adjust cell contents as you drag a selection on-screen. It ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2018-12-31 17:57:33
Neil
REPLACE would also work just fine for this. You can do REPLACE in a selection (like a column) if you don't want to do the replacement in the entire sheet.
2018-12-28 16:48:15
Yvan Loranger
Slightly off-topic but SUBSTITUTE has a 4th parameter:
SUBSTITUTE(string,oldtext,newtext,occurrence) where an occurrence of 3 would substitute only the 3rd occurrence.
If not specified [as in this Excel Tip] all occurrences are substituted.
2018-12-28 07:54:12
Harold Druss
How about a column of existing phone numbers.
How do I format the entire column.
2018-12-27 05:12:10
SteveJez
Henry,
The following will deal with the negative number issue as the substitute is only intended to be applied to a text string in this example
=IF(ISTEXT(A7),SUBSTITUTE(A7,"-","."),"Cell "&CELL("address",A7)&" is not text")
Steve
2018-12-26 10:13:26
Henry Noble
Be careful also with negative numbers, including those displayed with parentheses. E.g. (7,394.00).
2018-12-26 09:33:38
JD Murphy
Using the SUBSTITUTE function:
Be careful if you are worried about FORMAT.
Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2021 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: 
Comments