Intermediate Excel · Interactive lesson 5 of 12
Text & date functions
Real contact lists are never clean: extra spaces, inconsistent IDs, names in one cell that should be two. Text functions fix the words; date functions turn calendar math — due dates, working days, month ends — into a formula instead of a finger-count.
Screens shown: Excel for Microsoft 365 for Windows. Practice works in any browser.
Written tutorialText and Date Functions in ExcelSkill check
Try these first:
- Strip stray spaces from a cell with
TRIM. - Pull part of a value out with
LEFT,RIGHT, orMID. - Combine two cells into one label with
TEXTJOINorCONCAT. - Count working days between two dates with
NETWORKDAYS.
All familiar? Skip ahead to I6 — Conditional Formatting.
Targeted teach
What you're learning
TRIM/CLEAN- Strips leading, trailing, and doubled-up spaces — the classic cause of two "identical-looking" values Excel treats as different.
LEFT,RIGHT,MIDLEFT(text,n)takes the first n characters,RIGHT(text,n)the last n, andMID(text,start,len)a slice from the middle.TEXTBEFORE/TEXTAFTER- Newer, when available — split around a delimiter without counting characters by hand.
CONCAT/TEXTJOINCONCATglues values together with nothing between them;TEXTJOIN(delimiter, ignore_empty, …)adds a separator and can skip blanks.TODAY,EOMONTH,YEAR/MONTH/DAYTODAY()returns today's date live;EOMONTH(date,months)jumps to a month-end; the others pull one part out of a date.NETWORKDAYS- Counts weekdays between two dates, inclusive — the building block for "how many working days until this is due."
"2026-09-28" — in real Excel you'd normally just click a date cell instead of typing the date as text.Where to find it in Excel
Formulas›Text›Date & Time
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Name | ID | Due | Last name | Days left | |||
| 2 | Delgado, Ines | EMP-0472 | 10/30/2026 | Delgado | 13 | |||
| 3 | Chen, Wei | EMP-1190 | 11/06/2026 | Chen | 18 | |||
| 4 | Okafor, Grace | EMP-0355 | 11/13/2026 | Okafor | 23 | |||
| 5 | ||||||||
| 6 | ||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||
| 8 |
Swipe sideways to see the whole window.
- 1Formulas tab.
- 2Text holds TRIM, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, CONCAT and TEXTJOIN.
- 3TEXTBEFORE returns the text before a delimiter, here the last name.
- 4Date & Time holds TODAY, EOMONTH, YEAR, MONTH, DAY and NETWORKDAYS.
Rendered view of Excel for Microsoft 365 (Windows). Ribbon layout can differ slightly on Mac, Excel for the web or a narrow window.
Guided practice
A messy contact list. Clean the name, extract part of the ID, build a display label, and count workdays until the due date.
Independent variation
Clean a real contact list
Take a genuinely messy list — names, IDs, or dates — and clean it up: trim stray spaces, pull a standard ID format out with LEFT/RIGHT/MID, build a combined display label, and calculate how many working days remain before a real deadline.
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