Text & Cleanup

Excel formula for Extract text before a delimiter

Grab everything to the left of the first dash, slash, or other separator.

Copy this formula

=TEXTBEFORE(A2, "-")

How the formula works

TEXTBEFORE returns the text up to the delimiter; TEXTAFTER returns what's after it. In older Excel, use LEFT with FIND to do the same. Pass a negative instance to count from the end.

Examples

=TEXTBEFORE("SKU-2026-A", "-")→SKU

Text before the first dash.

Other ways to do this

Legacy (LEFT + FIND)

=LEFT(A2, FIND("-", A2)-1)

Use before TEXTBEFORE existed.

FAQ

What if the delimiter isn't found?

TEXTBEFORE returns #N/A; add a 4th argument for a fallback, e.g. the whole string.

Related formulas

Split text into separate columns Extract a file extension

Functions used

TEXTBEFORE TEXTAFTER LEFT FIND

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