Author: Oscar Cronquist Article last updated on January 12, 2021

This article demonstrates an array formula that extracts all characters except numbers from a cell, cell C3 contains the formula and it extracts everything except the numbers from cell B3 shown in the image above.

The following formula contains the TEXTJOIN function and it works only in Excel 2016.

=TEXTJOIN("", TRUE, TEXT(MID(B3, ROW($A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, LEN(B3))), 1), ""))

It allows you to filter values up to 1000 characters and you can easily change that limit by changing this cell reference: $A$1:$A$1000 in the formula above.

Update 1/12/2021 new dynamic array formula in cell C3:

=TEXTJOIN("",TRUE,TEXT(MID(B3,SEQUENCE(LEN(B3)),1),""))

This formula works only with Excel 365, it contains the new SEQUENCE function that creates an array containing numbers from 1 to n.

Explaining the array formula in cell C3

The following part builds a cell reference that has as many values as there are characters in cell B3.

$A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, LEN(B3))

becomes

$A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, 7) and returns $A$1:$A$7.

The ROW function then converts the cell range to an array containing the numbers 1, 2, 3 ... up to the number of characters in cell B3.

ROW($A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, LEN(B3)))

becomes

ROW($A$1:$A$7) and returns this array: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}.

The MID function then splits the values into an array of 7 values containing a character each.

MID(B3, ROW($A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, LEN(B3))), 1)

becomes

MID(B3, {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}, 1) and returns {"A";"A";"1";"2";"3";"B";"B"}.

The TEXT function removes the numbers from the array.

TEXT(MID(B3, ROW($A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, LEN(B3))), 1), "")

becomes

TEXT({"A";"A";"1";"2";"3";"B";"B"}, "") and returns {"A";"A";"";"";"";"B";"B"}.

Lastly, the TEXTJOIN function concatenates all values in the array without a delimiting character, empty values are ignored.

TEXTJOIN("", TRUE, TEXT(MID(B3, ROW($A$1:INDEX($A$1:$A$1000, LEN(B3))), 1), ""))

becomes

TEXTJOIN("", TRUE, {"A";"A";"";"";"";"B";"B"}) and returns AABB in cell C3.

Get Excel *.xlsx file

How to remove numbers from cell value.xlsx

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