TEXT Function in Excel: Explained

In this article you will learn how to use the TEXT formula in Excel.

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What does the TEXT formula in Excel do?

The TEXT function in Excel allows you to format a value as text with a specified format. This can be useful when you want to display numbers or dates in a particular format that is not provided by Excel's default formatting options.

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When is the TEXT function in Excel useful?

There are multiple ways to use the text formula in Excel. Please see below for some places where using the TEXT function is beneficial:

1. Formatting dates: Excel provides a number of built-in date formats, but sometimes you may need to display a date in a specific format that is not available. For example, if you want to display a date as "mmm-dd-yyyy" (e.g., Mar-16-2023), you can use the TEXT function to format the date.
2. Formatting numbers: Excel provides many options for formatting numbers, but you may need to display a number in a specific format that is not available. For example, if you want to display a number with a leading zero (e.g., 01, 02, 03), you can use the TEXT function to add the zero.
3. Concatenating text and numbers: When you combine text and numbers in a formula, Excel may treat the result as text or a number depending on the order of the items. The TEXT function allows you to explicitly convert a number to text so that it can be combined with other text.
4. Creating custom labels: If you have a chart or table that requires custom labels, you can use the TEXT function to create the labels. For example, if you have a chart that displays sales by month, you can use the TEXT function to create labels that display the month and year (e.g., "Mar-2023") instead of just the month.

Overall, the TEXT function can be useful in many different situations where you need to format a value as text with a specific format.

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How to use the TEXT Formula in Excel?

The syntax for the TEXT function is:

=TEXT(value, format_text)

where "value" is the number or date you want to format, and "format_text" is the format you want to apply.

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Note: The TEXT formula will convert numbers to text which makes it difficult to use them later in calculations. It's best to always keep your original data and use the TEXT function in another cell. This way if you need to use the original data in further calculations you can do that easily. 

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You can learn about other Excel and Google Sheets formulas and tips that are not mentioned here on this page: LiveFlow‘s How to Guides