Getting Rid of Everything Except Numbers

Linda has a column that contains alpha and numeric characters. She needs to retain the numeric characters and delete the alpha ones. For example, a cell may contain 10003E111 and she wants to end up with 10003111.

There are a few ways you can approach this problem. Before proceeding with any solution, however, you should make sure that you aren't trying to change something that isn't really broken. For instance, you'll want to make sure that the "E" that appears in the number isn't part of the format of the number—in other words, a designation of exponentiation. If it is, then you don't really want to remove the character because it will end up changing the nature of the underlying number.

If you determine that the characters aren't part of the number's format, then you can first try using a formula to remove the alpha characters. If the values you want to change are in column A, you could enter the following formula in column B:

=SUM(MID(0&A1,LARGE(INDEX(ISNUMBER(--MID(A1,
ROW($1:$99),1))*ROW($1:$99),),ROW($1:$99))+1,
1)*10^ROW($1:$99)/10)

Make sure you enter this as an array formula by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter. (If you are using Excel in Microsoft 365, you won't need to use Ctrl+Shift+Enter.) The result is that column B contains the values from column A, without the alpha characters. You could use Paste Special to copy the information from column B to another column so that you end up with actual values instead of formula results.

If your version of Excel supports the LET, SEQUENCE, and TEXTJOIN functions (in other words, if you are using Excel in Microsoft 365 or Excel 2021), then you can use a different formulaic approach:

=LET(c, MID(A1,SEQUENCE(1,LEN(A1)),1), d, UNICODE(c),
VALUE(TEXTJOIN("",TRUE,IF(d<48,"",IF(d>57,"",c)))))

This formula defines the variable c as a character in cell A1 and the variable d as the UNICODE value of that character. The actual formula then uses TEXTJOIN to put together a string of those characters that are numeric and, finally, VALUE converts that string to a value.

These formulaic approaches may work great for short-term use on a single workbook, but if you need to do this sort of data processing more often then you will want to create a user-defined function to do the processing. Here's an example:

Function OnlyNums(sWord As String)
    Dim sChar As String
    Dim x As Integer
    Dim sTemp As String

    sTemp = ""
    For x = 1 To Len(sWord)
        sChar = Mid(sWord, x, 1)
        If Asc(sChar) >= 48 And _
          Asc(sChar) <= 57 Then
            sTemp = sTemp & sChar
        End If
    Next
    OnlyNums = Val(sTemp)
End Function

You use this function by calling it from within a worksheet cell:

=OnlyNums(A1)

The function returns a numeric value. If you want to create an even shorter macro to do the processing, consider the following:

Function StripChar(aText As String)
    Dim I As Integer

    StripChar = ""
    For I = 1 To Len(aText)
        aChar = Mid(aText, I, 1)
        Select Case aChar
            Case "0" To "9"
                StripChar = StripChar & aChar
        End Select
    Next
End Function

To use this function, use either of the following in your worksheet:

=STRIPCHAR(A1)
=VALUE(STRIPCHAR(A1))

The first returns a text string consisting of the digits, the second returns the numeric version of that string.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11750) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Getting Rid of Everything Except Numbers.