How to Remove Parentheses in Excel – Brackets Removal

Parentheses (brackets) are often used for many reasons. Based on the context, you can add or remove parentheses easily. Sometimes, you may find them in contact numbers, country codes, and other numeric data. You may need to group a value and for this parentheses are used.

In case, you need to know to remove these parentheses in Excel, you must know how it happens. It would be challenging when you are having a larger dataset. Whenever you import data from other sources, you will find parentheses present in your data.

Let’s see how to remove parentheses in Excel by using multiple approaches:

How to Remove Parentheses in Excel?

You may need to remove these bracket symbols from the sheet by following these methods:

• With Find and Replace Feature
• With the SUBSTITUTE Function
• With VBA

How to Remove Parentheses in Excel with the Find and Replace Command?

To remove bracket symbols, you can use the Find and Replace command easily. You can simply use this feature to identify these parentheses while replacing them with another character or nothing. For this, you can follow these steps:

• Open the Home tab in Excel.
• Choose the Find and Select menu.

• You will notice a drop-down menu.
• Choose the Replace option from the drop-down, or else you can press CTRL + H from the keyboard.
• The find and Replace dialog box will appear.

• Enter the symbol ‘(‘ in the Find What box.
• If you don’t want to add anything as a replacement, leave the Replace box empty. It ensures that Excel will delete the ‘(‘.

Now, click on the option box for further parameters searches:

Within>Workbook

It will be used when you need to search for the data in a sheet.

Within>Sheet

It is used when you need to search for data in a worksheet.

Search

Using this will let you define the search by rows or columns.

Match Case

You can use it If you need to find case-sensitive data.

Match Entire Cell Contents

It is used when you need to find cells containing the characters in the search criteria.

• Choose the Replace All button when you need to replace all instances of the ‘(‘ symbol. On the other hand, to remove the ‘(‘ from the selected range then click on the Replace button.
• You will see a notification message with the number of replacements.
• Press OK.

• Now, you will notice that all the opening parentheses are removed in the selected range.

Let’s remove the closing parentheses now:

• Move on to the Home tab.
• Choose the Find & Select option.
• You will see a drop-down.
• Choose the Replace button from the drop-down, or else you can press the CTRL + H keys.
• The dialog box of Find and Replace will appear.
• Enter the symbol ‘(‘ in the Find What box.
• Leave the Replace box empty to ensure that Excel deletes the ‘)’.

• Choose the Replace All option.
• You will see a notification appears at the replacement.
• Press OK.
• You will notice that all the Closing parentheses are also removed in the selected range.

How to Remove Parentheses in Excel with SUBSTITUTE Function?

Here we will use the SUBSTITUTE function that assists in removing parentheses in Excel. With this function, you can find a text in the cell while replacing it with another text. Below are the steps to execute this function.

Let’s learn how it happens:

• First, remove the parentheses in Column Output1.
• In Column output2, remove the closed parentheses.
• Choose Cell D5 in the beginning and enter the formula given below:

=SUBSTITUTE(B5, “(“,””)

• Press ENTER key.

• Now, drag down the Fill Handle and copy the formula for the cells.
• You will notice that the starting parentheses are removed.

• Put the formula in Cell E5:

=SUBSTITUTE(D5,”)”,””)

• Press the ENTER key and drag down the Fill Handle icon. It will copy the formula.
• You will notice that all the closing parentheses are removed as well.

VBA Code to Remove Parentheses:

Following is the VBA code that you can use to remove the parentheses from the selected cell range.

Sub remove_parenthese()

'this will replace the starting parentheses.

Selection.Replace What:="(", Replacement:="", LookAt:=xlPart, _

SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False, _

ReplaceFormat:=False

'this will replace the ending parentheses.

Selection.Replace What:=")", Replacement:="", LookAt:=xlPart, _

SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False, _

ReplaceFormat:=False

End Sub

First, you need to select the cells and then runt the above code.

It will instantly remove the parentheses from the selected range of cells.

All Done!