Removing a letter from multiple cells at once

**TLG** · 08-22-2010, 12:11 AM

Ok, so the problem is pretty much in the title.

I was using an ancient instrument to record some data for a chemistry project I am doing at my university. When copying the output to excel, all of the readings for temperature are in - number C - form (to denote degrees celcius). eg. 3.016 C

There are about 3000 readings and to plot the data I don't want to have to go through each and backspace the C. Is there any way around this, to remove the C from all at once??

**shg** · 08-22-2010, 12:55 AM

Edit > Replace, replave " C" (sans quotes) with nothing.

**TLG** · 08-22-2010, 01:07 AM

Thankyou! Also for anyone else who has this problem i messed around and used this sort of formula,

say my value was in a1 - then: a new cell formula =value(left(a1,5))

I then copied this for all of the previous 3000 cells :D

**darkyam** · 08-22-2010, 07:50 AM

TLG, while shg's method is the cleanest and quickest, just thought I'd add that the value function rarely needs to be used to convert text to numbers. Multiplying by 1 or adding 0 works in all cases I'm aware of for numbers stored as text, except for dates stored in a format it doesn't understand. For your data, you also could have used Text to Columns, with a space as a delimiter, then just deleted the second column. (All of this is just for future reference, as similar issues with different situations may have different solutions be the most efficient.)

**whitemonk** · 01-11-2011, 11:03 PM

Hi,

Is there any way to remove the first symbol before the one '1/12/10. As the report that was sent to me has the symbol before all dates, i tried ( ctrl+H replacement but it wouldn't get rid of the symbol)?

Thanks

Jono