Excel TEXTBEFORE Function: Get Text Before a Character

The Excel TEXTBEFORE function returns the text that comes before a delimiter, such as everything before the @ in an email address.

fx=TEXTBEFORE(text, delimiter, [instance_num], [match_mode], [match_end], [if_not_found])

`text`	The text or cell to search.
`delimiter`	The character or text to stop at.
`instance_num` optional	Which occurrence to use. Default is 1; -1 means the last one.
`match_mode` optional	1 to ignore case.
`match_end` optional	1 to treat the end of the text as a delimiter.
`if_not_found` optional	What to return if the delimiter isn’t there. Default is `#N/A`.

Table of Contents

Basic example

To get the username from each email address, take everything before the @:

=TEXTBEFORE(B3,"@")

anu@gmail.com returns anu. The older way needs LEFT and FIND together: =LEFT(B3,FIND("@",B3)-1).

A negative instance_num counts from the end. -1 uses the last dash:

=TEXTBEFORE(B3,"-",-1)

KL-2026-0451 returns KL-2026, the state and year without the serial number.

Madonna has no space, so a plain TEXTBEFORE would return #N/A. The last argument, if_not_found, returns the whole name instead:

=TEXTBEFORE(B5," ",,,,B5)

The commas skip the arguments in between. Madonna returns Madonna, and the others return their first name.

Using the text KL-2026-0451:

For the text after a delimiter, use TEXTAFTER.

Problem	Cause	Fix
`#N/A`	The delimiter isn’t in the text	Add an `if_not_found` value
`#VALUE!`	`instance_num` is 0 or larger than the number of delimiters	Use 1, 2, -1 and so on
`#NAME?`	Excel 2021 or earlier	Use LEFT and FIND

Practice file

All three examples with working formulas (Excel 2024 or 365).