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.
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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.
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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: 
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