How to Remove Text and Keep Numbers in Excel, or the Other Way Round

Remove Text, Numbers or Symbols From Excel Cells

An order list arrives from a web shop. The quantities read 12 pcs and Qty 5, the amounts read USD 1,250.50, and the total at the bottom says 0.00. Remove Characters in Dose for Excel lets you remove text and keep numbers in Excel without formulas or helper columns. Select your cells, tick what should go, and click Apply.

What’s left becomes a real number that your totals can use. It works the other way round too, removing numbers and keeping the text, and it can clear symbols and hidden characters. Your formulas stay formulas, and references like 00201 keep their leading zeros.

Silent demo: play

Why Text Mixed With Numbers Breaks Your Totals

To you, 12 pcs is a quantity of twelve. To Excel it’s a piece of text, and SUM has nothing to add. So a column full of amounts can total zero, or worse, a low figure that looks believable because a few cells happened to be real numbers. The same thing breaks charts, pivot tables and sorting. Here is the sort of list that needs you to remove text and keep numbers in Excel:

What Excel’s Own Tools Leave Behind

Excel has no single command to remove text and keep numbers. Its own tools can get part of the way, and they’re fine for a small list. Here is what each one offers, with Microsoft’s own page for it:

Excel’s tool	What it does	What it leaves you with
Flash Fill	Fills a column when it senses a pattern in what you type.	A new column to check row by row, because a messy list rarely follows one pattern. The old column is still there to deal with.
Find and Replace	Its wildcards are the question mark, the asterisk and the tilde.	None of them means “any digit” or “any letter”, so clearing the digits takes one run for each digit.
Convert to Number	Turns numbers stored as text into real numbers.	It’s for cells that hold only a number. It can’t pull the 12 out of 12 pcs.
TEXTJOIN with MID	A formula can go through a cell one character at a time and join up the ones you want.	TEXTJOIN needs Excel 2019 or later. The formula sits in a helper column, its answer is still text, and you paste the values back when it’s done.
SUBSTITUTE	Replaces one piece of text you name with another.	One SUBSTITUTE for each symbol, nested inside each other, in another helper column.
CLEAN	Removes the first 32 nonprinting characters.	Other hidden characters stay, such as the zero-width character that arrives with pasted web text.

What Remove Characters Can Remove

The pane lists what you can take out. To remove text and keep numbers in Excel, use Non-numeric. To do the reverse, use Numeric or Non-alpha. You can tick more than one option, and they all run on the same cells. A letter counts as a letter in any language, not only in English.

Option	What it removes	Example
Numeric: Only numbers	Digits.	Desk Lamp 4471 becomes Desk Lamp
Numeric: Numbers with period	Whole numbers, with their decimal mark or fraction slash.	1/2 cup becomes cup
Alpha: All Alpha	Letters.	abc123 becomes the number 123
Alpha: Capital Letters	Capital letters only.	Ab Cd becomes b d
Alpha: Small Letters	Small letters only.	Ab Cd becomes A C
Non-numeric	Everything that isn’t part of a number.	USD 1,250.50 becomes the number 1,250.50
Non-alpha	Everything except letters and spaces.	Desk Lamp #4471 becomes Desk Lamp
Non-printing	Hidden characters. A line break or tab becomes a space.	a over b becomes a b
Non-alphanumeric	Symbols, keeping letters, digits and spaces.	Desk Lamp #4471 becomes Desk Lamp 4471
Custom	The characters you type in the box.	[Sale] with [] typed becomes Sale

How to Remove Text and Keep Numbers in Excel

These steps remove text and keep numbers in Excel on whatever you select:

1. Select the cells you want to change. That can be a range, a whole column, several separate ranges or the whole sheet. Leave out any column you want to keep as it is.
2. Go to the DOSE tab, open the Text menu and choose Remove Characters… The pane opens on the right.
3. Numeric is ticked when the pane opens. Untick it unless you want digits removed.
4. Tick Non-numeric, or whichever options you need.
5. Tick Backup sheet if you want a copy of the sheet first.
6. Click Apply. If you ticked Backup sheet, Dose asks Do you want to backup your sheet before? Click Yes for the copy. Your cells change quickly, and the pane stays open for another run.

Example: Remove Text and Keep Numbers in an Order List

Back to the list from the top of this page. In the example below we selected B2 to D12, which takes in the order references, the quantities, the amounts and both totals. We unticked Numeric, ticked Non-numeric and Backup sheet, then clicked Apply and Yes. The result:

• The totals work. They read 199 and 11,322.50 now, and they’re still the same SUM formulas. Nothing was wrong with the formulas, only with what they were given.
• The values take the column’s format. Paid 2,300.00 and $980.00 line up on the right as 2,300.00 and 980.00.
• The references keep their zeros. ORD-00201 became 00201, not 201. It stays as text, because a number like that is really a label. Excel may mark it with a small green triangle, and that’s fine.

Remove Numbers and Keep Text in Excel

Sometimes it’s the digits that have to go. These product names have numbers mixed in, in a different place each time, so a lookup for Desk Lamp shows #N/A:

In the example below we selected A2 to A9, ticked Numeric with Only numbers showing, and clicked Apply. The numbers are gone, and so are the spaces they left behind, so Office 2208 Chair becomes Office Chair with one space. The lookup now finds its price:

Silent demo: play

Remove Symbols and Hidden Characters

This list of order statuses has symbols all over it. Row 4 looks clean, but it holds a hidden character that doesn’t print, and row 9 has a line break at the end. So COUNTIF finds nothing at all, even though there are eight orders:

In the example below we selected A2 to A9, ticked Non-printing and Custom, typed !#*[]()<> in the box, and clicked Apply. Each character you type is removed exactly as typed, in any order. To remove a whole run of characters, type a range such as a-z or 0-9. Ranges are case-sensitive, so a-z leaves capitals alone.

Silent demo: play

What Remove Characters Leaves Alone

When you remove text and keep numbers in Excel with this tool, it doesn’t turn everything that’s left into a number. Anything the conversion would damage stays as text, and these are left alone:

In your selection	What happens
Formulas	Left as they are. They stay formulas, and they update when the cells they read change.
Error values such as #N/A, and TRUE or FALSE	Left as they are.
Real dates, and text that reads as a date such as 12/31/2024	Left as they are.
Values with leading zeros, such as 00123	Stay as text, so the zeros are kept.
Numbers longer than 15 digits	Stay as text, because Excel can’t hold them exactly as numbers.
Text like 1/2, 1-2 or 1,2,3, when there’s nothing to remove	Stays as text under Non-numeric.
Rows hidden by a filter	Left as they are. Only the visible cells change.
Cells with nothing to remove	Not written to, so they keep everything they had, spaces included.

Keep a Backup of Your Sheet First

Before you remove text and keep numbers in Excel, it’s worth having a way back. Tick Backup sheet and Dose asks you before it starts. Click Yes, and it adds a full copy of the sheet next to the original, named with a (2) at the end. Your cells then change on the original sheet, and the copy keeps everything as it was. Click No, and it goes ahead without a copy.

Good to Know Before You Run It

A few things are worth checking when you remove text and keep numbers in Excel, especially on a list from somewhere else:

• Decimal marks follow your Windows regional settings. A number with both marks works on any PC: 1,250.50 and 1.250,50 both give 1250.5.
• Non-numeric joins whatever digits it finds. a1-b2 becomes 12, and 1,2,3x becomes 123. If a cell holds two separate numbers, split it first.
• A minus sign counts only directly before the first digit. -5 kg becomes -5, and (120.00) becomes 120, because brackets are removed.
• Only numbers takes digits and nothing else. 1/2 cup becomes / cup. Use Numbers with period to take the whole number.
• All Alpha takes letters and nothing else. total: 99 becomes : 99. Use Non-numeric to get 99.
• A real number is treated like any other cell. Only numbers empties a cell holding just a number, so select only the cells you mean to change.
• Spaces are tidied in cells that change. Spaces at the edges go, and double spaces become one. A space just before a line break stays.
• Partly bold text keeps its formatting if nothing changes. If its text does change, the partial bold is lost, because the cell gets its new content as a whole.
• Protected sheets: if the sheet is protected, Dose asks you to unprotect it first, unless every cell you selected is unlocked.
• Remember my settings: open the menu at the top of the pane to save your choices for next time, or to reset them.

When People Use Remove Characters

These are the moments people most often need to remove text and keep numbers in Excel, or the other way round:

• Exports from web shops and accounting systems: amounts that carry a currency, and quantities that carry a unit.
• Product lists: names with reference numbers stuck to them, which stop a lookup from matching.
• Text pasted from web pages and PDFs: this is where hidden characters and stray symbols come from.
• Tagged statuses and categories: brackets and hash signs that stop COUNTIF and pivot tables from grouping them.
• Before a report: so every total counts every row.

Demo: Remove Text and Keep Numbers, Start to Finish

This tutorial shows how to remove text and keep numbers in Excel using the examples on this page, then removes numbers and keeps the text, and finally clears symbols and hidden characters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Dose for Excel Tools

These tools help when you’ve used this one to remove text and keep numbers in Excel and need the next step, or when you need one specific job:

• Remove extra spaces in Excel – a dedicated tool for leading, trailing, extra or all spaces.
• Clean data in Excel – spaces, line breaks, capitals and numbers stored as text, all in one pane.
• Extract text from Excel cells – pull out what comes before, after or between certain characters.
• Remove characters by position – take a set number of characters from the start, the end or a position you choose.
• Split cells in Excel – divide values by a delimiter or a character count, when a cell holds two separate things.
• Change case in Excel – the standalone tool for UPPER, lower, Proper and Sentence case.