The REPLACE function
The easiest way to remove the first character from a cell is to use the REPLACE function.
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=REPLACE(A1,1,1,"") |
This function replaces a part of a string with a different string.
Explanation
=REPLACE( old_text, start_num, num_chars, new_text )
old_text – The function takes “!This is text” as the first argument.
start_num – Which character to replace. In our case, it’s the first one.
num_chars – The number of characters to replace. We want only 1.
new_text – The text to replace the portion of the text. In our case is empty space, because we want the first character to be deleted.
RIGHT and LEN functions
If you want to use a different approach, you can use RIGHT and LEN functions.
The RIGHT function returns the number of characters from the right of the string.
The LEN function returns the length of the string.
The following formula will return all characters – 1 from the RIGHT.
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=RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-1) |
Let’s check it inside the worksheet.
VBA Code
You can use this simple function to remove the first character from a string. It will take one argument, which is a string.
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Function RemoveFirstCharacter(rng As String) RemoveFirstCharacter = Right(rng, Len(rng) - 1) End Function |
Insert this function into a new module and use it as a normal function.
