How do i remove the last 3 characters in excel?

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How do i remove the last 3 characters in excel?

Summary 

To remove the last n characters from a text string, you can use a formula based on the LEFT and LEN functions. You can use a formula like this to strip the last 6 characters of a text string, starting on the left. In the example shown, the formula in E6 is:

which trims " miles" from each value returning just the number. The VALUE function converts text to a numeric value.

Explanation 

The LEFT function is perfect for extracting characters starting from the left side of a text string. We use LEFT in this formula to extract all characters up to the number of characters we want to trim.

The challenge, for values with variable length, is that we don't know exactly how many characters to extract. That's where the LEN function is used.

Working from the inside out, LEN calculates the total length of each value. For D6 (736 miles) the total length is 9. To get the number of characters to extract, we subtract 6, which the length of " miles", including the space character. The result is 3, which is fed to LEFT as the number of characters to extract. LEFT then returns the text "736" as a text value.

Finally, because we want a numeric value (and not text) we run the text through the VALUE function, which converts numbers in text format to actual numbers.

The formula steps look like this:

Note: there is no reason to use the VALUE function if you don't need a numeric result.

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Related functions 

How do i remove the last 3 characters in excel?

The Excel LEFT function extracts a given number of characters from the left side of a supplied text string. For example, LEFT("apple",3) returns "app".

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The Excel LEN function returns the length of a given text string as the number of characters. LEN will also count characters in numbers, but number formatting is not included.

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The Excel VALUE function converts text that appears in a recognized format (i.e. a number, date, or time format) into a numeric value. Normally, the VALUE function is not needed in Excel, because Excel automatically converts text to numeric...

How do i remove the last 3 characters in excel?

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