Excel Tutorial – SUBSTITUTE

The SUBSTITUTE 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 SUBSTITUTE function, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Select the cell where you want the result of the SUBSTITUTE function to appear.
2. Type “=SUBSTITUTE(” (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 instance number of the character or characters that you want to replace. The first instance of the character or characters is considered instance 1. If you want to replace all instances of the character or characters, you can set this parameter to 0.
7. Close the parenthesis by typing “)”.

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