Written and reviewed by FormulaCraft Team. Each formula on this page is run through our verification engine before publishing.
Last reviewed:
How to remove non-numeric characters in Excel and Google Sheets
Topic:Text manipulationHeads up: Excel and Google Sheets do this differently.
Excel
=TEXTJOIN("",TRUE,IF(ISNUMBER(VALUE(MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2))),1))),MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2))),1),""))Google Sheets
=REGEXREPLACE(A2,"[^0-9]","")Try it with your data
Edit the grid or formula, then run it through a real spreadsheet engine — no signup.
Sample data — click any cell to edit
Runs server-side · free · no signup
Step by step
- 1In Google Sheets, enter =REGEXREPLACE(A2,"[^0-9]","") — this replaces every character that is NOT a digit with nothing.
- 2In Excel 365, use =TEXTJOIN("",TRUE,IF(ISNUMBER(VALUE(MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2))),1))),MID(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2))),1),"")) as a Ctrl+Shift+Enter array formula.
- 3Wrap in VALUE() if you need the output as an actual number rather than a text string.
- 4Copy the formula down for all rows.
Tips
- To also allow decimal points in the result, adjust the Sheets regex to [^0-9\.] to keep periods alongside digits.
Need the Google Sheets version instead? Open Sheets variant in workspace →
Working on a sheet you inherited? Run the Auditor on the whole file first — it flags every #REF!, #N/A, broken column pattern, and inconsistent formula in seconds, free, no signup.
Frequently asked
Will this work on phone numbers with parentheses and dashes?
Yes — all non-digit characters including parentheses, spaces, and dashes are removed, leaving only the numeric digits.
What about preserving a leading plus sign for international numbers?
Adjust the regex to [^0-9+] to allow the plus sign through.
More on Text manipulation
See all →How-to
How to split text into columns
Split a full name or any delimited text into separate columns. Google Sheets uses SPLIT; Excel uses TEXTSPLIT — here is each.
How-toHow to remove extra spaces
Clean leading, trailing, and double spaces with TRIM — the usual fix for lookups that fail on values that look identical.
How-toHow to convert text to a number
Turn numbers stored as text into real numbers with VALUE or by multiplying by 1 — the fix for sums that ignore values.
How-toHow to extract the domain from an email address
Pull everything after the @ from an email using FIND and MID. Works the same in Excel and Google Sheets.
How-toHow to extract the first name from a full name
Get the first name from a full name with LEFT and FIND, splitting on the first space. Works in Excel and Google Sheets.
How-toHow to add leading zeros
Pad numbers to a fixed width with leading zeros using TEXT, or a custom number format. Works in Excel and Google Sheets.