Substitute Function in Excel

What Does Substitute Function Do in Excel?

Substitute function in excel is a very useful function which is used to replace or substitute a given text with another text in a given cell, this function is widely used when we send massive emails or messages in a bulk, instead of creating separate text for every user we use substitute function to replace the information.

Syntax

Substitute function in excel has four parameters three (text, old_text,new_text) are compulsory parameters and one (instance_num) is optional.

Compulsory Parameter:

• text: It is a text from which we want to substitute some text.
• old_text: It is a text which is going to replace.
• new_text: It is the text which replaces the old text.

Optional Parameter:

• [instance_num]: it specifies the occurrence of old_text. if you specify the instance only, that instance will have replaced by a substitute function; otherwise, all instances are replaced by it.

How to Use Substitute Function in Excel? (with Examples)

Example #1

In the first example, we will substitute the “_” with space in the given set of Name data.

To get the desired output, Tanuj Rajput from Tanuj_Rajput apply the Substitute formula SUBSTITUTE(A2,”_,” “1)

It will replace the first instance of “_” with space, and you will get the desired data as output.

Example #2

In this example, we will replace the first instance of character “a” with “w” in the given dataset of full name by using the substitute function.

Let’s apply the =SUBSTITUTE(A2,”a”,”w”,1) formula in the Formula column,

As shown in the below table and you will get the output in the Output column, shown in the third column.

Example #3

In this example, we will replace all instances of character “a” with “w” in the given data set

By using the substitute formula excel =SUBSTITUTE(B38,”a”,”w”)

And drag it to in the formula column to the output with no “a” values, as shown in the below table.

Example #4

In this example, we will replace all the spaces with blank from the given set of Full names.

Here, we will apply the below substitute formula to achieve this =SUBSTITUTE(I8,”, “)

By using this, you will get the Output without space, as shown in the below table.

Things to Remember

• The substitute function is the case-sensitive function.
  • Substitute function considers tanuj and Tanuj as different values, which means it can distinguish b/w lower case and upper case.
• Substitute function does not support wildcard characters, i.e. “?” ,“*” and “~” tilde.

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This has been a guide to Substitute in Excel. Here we discuss how to use the Substitute function in excel along with excel example and downloadable excel templates. You may also look at these useful functions in excel –

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