Add text strings at the beginning, at the end, or at another position in Excel cells

When you need to insert some text into each Excel cell, creating functions or using VBA can be quite time consuming. It gets even more complicated if you need, for example, to add text into a specific position in a cell or before specific text.

The Add Characters feature helps add custom substrings (letters, numbers, spaces, commas or any other characters) to cells in seconds:

Add Characters is one of the 20+ features within XLTools Add-in for Excel. Works in Excel 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, desktop Office 365.

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1. Click the Data Cleaning button on XLTools ribbon Select Add characters from the drop-down list A dialogue box will open.

2. Select the range where you want to add characters.

   

   Tip: click on any cell in a table, and the entire table will be automatically selected.

3. Type the substring you want to add to each cell.

4. Choose the position in a cell: at the beginning.

   

   

5. Click OK Done, the text string is added at the beginning of each cell.

   

   

1. Click the Data Cleaning button on XLTools ribbon Select Add characters from the drop-down list A dialogue box will open.

2. Select the range where you want to add characters.

   

   Tip: click on any cell in a table, and the entire table will be automatically selected.

3. Type the substring you want to add to each cell.

4. Choose the position in a cell: at the end.

   

   

5. Click OK Done, the text string is added at the end of each cell.

   

   

1. Click the Data Cleaning button on XLTools ribbon Select Add characters from the drop-down list A dialogue box will open.

2. Select the range where you want to add characters.

   

   Tip: click on any cell in a table, and the entire table will be automatically selected.

3. Type the substring you want to add to each cell.

4. Choose the position in a cell: after character number N Specify the number of characters from the beginning, where you want to insert the text string.

   

   

5. Click OK Done, the text string is added in the middle of each cell.

   

   

1. Click the Data Cleaning button on XLTools ribbon Select Add characters from the drop-down list A dialogue box will open.

2. Select the range where you want to add characters.

   

   Tip: click on any cell in a table, and the entire table will be automatically selected.

3. Type the substring you want to add to each cell.

4. Choose the position in a cell: before this text or after this text Type the text string to search for (case sensitive by default).

   

   

5. Click OK Done, the text string is added before or after the specified text in those cells, where it was found.

   

   

By default, the Add Characters feature does not process cells that contain formulas, not to interfere with calculations. You can specify additional data processing options:

• Check the Skip empty cells option

  Select this option, if you don’t want to add the characters into empty (blank) cells.

• Check the Skip non-text cells option

  Select this option, if you want to process only cells with text. All cells that have number, date, currency or other format will be ignored.

• Check the Skip header row option

  Select this option, if you want to ignore the first row with the table header.