How can I remove the last character from a string in Google Sheets?

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To remove the last character from a string in Google Sheets, you can use the “LEFT” function combined with the “LEN” function. This will allow you to extract all characters except for the last one, effectively removing it from the original string. Additionally, you can also use the “SUBSTITUTE” function to replace the last character with an empty string, achieving the same result. Both of these methods can be easily applied to any cell containing a string in your Google Sheets document.

Google Sheets: Remove Last Character from String

Often you may want to remove the last character from a string in Google Sheets.

You can use the LEFT function combined with the LEN function to do so:

=LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)-1)

This particular formula will remove the last character from the string in cell A2.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: Remove Last Character from String in Google Sheets

Suppose we have the following list of basketball team names in Google Sheets:

Now suppose that we would like to remove the last character from each team name.

We can type the following formula into cell B2 to do so:

=LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)-1)

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:

Google Sheets remove last character from string

Column B now displays the team names in column A with the last character removed from each team name.

How This Formula Works

Recall the formula that we used to remove the last character from a string:

=LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)-1)

The LEFT() function in Google Sheets extracts a specific number of characters from the left side of a string.

The LEN() function in Google Sheets is used to find the length of a string.

Thus, our formula extracta the amount of characters equal to the length of the string minus one character starting from the left side of the string.

Thus, our formula displays the entire string with the last character removed.

Note: Blank spaces in a string count as characters. You may need to first remove blank spaces to get your desired result.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Google Sheets:

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