Table of Contents
To remove the first 3 characters from a string in Google Sheets, you can use the built-in function “RIGHT”. This function allows you to extract a specific number of characters from the right side of a string. By specifying a number of characters to extract that is equal to the length of the string minus 3, you can effectively remove the first 3 characters. This method is useful for manipulating and cleaning up data in your Google Sheets spreadsheet.
Google Sheets: Remove First 3 Characters from String
Often you may want to remove the first 3 characters from a string in Google Sheets.
You can use the RIGHT function combined with the LEN function to do so:
=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-3)
This particular formula removes the first 3 characters from the string in cell A2.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Remove First 3 Characters from String in Google Sheets
Suppose we have the following list of basketball team names:
Suppose we would like to remove the first three characters from each team name.
We can type the following formula into cell B2 to do so:
=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-3)
We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:
Column B now displays the team names in column A with the first three characters removed from each team name.
How This Formula Works
The RIGHT() function in Google Sheets extracts a specific number of characters from the right side of a string.
The LEN() function in Google Sheets is used to find the length of a string.
Thus, our formula displays the entire string with the first three characters removed.
Note #1: Blank spaces at the start of a string count as characters. You may need to first remove blank spaces to get your desired result.
Note #2: To remove a different number of starting characters from a string, simply change the 3 in the formula to a different value.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Google Sheets: