Excel Tutorial – REPLACE

The REPLACE function in Excel allows you to replace a specific set of characters within a text string with a different set of characters. This can be useful if you want to modify a text string by replacing certain words or phrases with different words or phrases.

To use the REPLACE function, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Select the cell where you want the result of the REPLACE function to appear.
2. Type “=REPLACE(” (without the quotes) into the cell.
3. Specify the text string that you want to modify. This should be a string of text enclosed in quotation marks or a reference to a cell containing a string of text.
4. Type a comma and then specify the character or characters that you want to replace within the text string. This should also be a string of text enclosed in quotation marks or a reference to a cell containing a string of text.
5. Type a comma and then specify the character or characters that you want to use as a replacement for the characters that you specified in the previous step. This should also be a string of text enclosed in quotation marks or a reference to a cell containing a string of text.
6. Type a comma and then specify the starting position for the replacement. The first character in the text string is considered position 1.
7. Type a comma and then specify the number of characters to replace. If you want to replace all of the characters from the starting position to the end of the text string, you can use the LEN function to determine the number of characters in the text string.
8. Close the parenthesis by typing “)”.

For example, if you wanted to replace the word “apple” with the word “banana” in the text string “I love eating apples”, you could use the following formula: “=REPLACE(“I love eating apples”, “apple”, “banana”, 1, LEN(“apple”))”. This will return the text string “I love eating bananas”.