The Excel PHONETIC function extracts the furigana — phonetic reading guides — attached to Japanese text in a cell. When you type kanji with the Japanese IME, Excel quietly stores the katakana reading you typed alongside the characters; PHONETIC pulls that hidden reading out, which is how Japanese spreadsheets sort name lists correctly. The crucial catch: the reading exists only for text typed into Excel. Pasted or imported text carries no phonetic data, so PHONETIC just hands the original text back.
Syntax
| Argument | Description | |
|---|---|---|
reference | Required | A cell or range containing text with stored phonetic information. For a range, the readings are concatenated in order. |
Available in: all Excel versions, but it only does real work when East Asian language support is active and the text was entered with an IME (Japanese, and to a lesser extent other East Asian input methods). On Western-language systems — or for any pasted/imported text — it returns the text itself.
Extracting furigana readings
Each kanji entry below was typed with the Japanese IME, so Excel stored the katakana reading the typist used. PHONETIC retrieves it:
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kanji (typed via Japanese IME) | =PHONETIC(A2) |
| 2 | 東京 | トウキョウ |
| 3 | 大阪 | オオサカ |
| 4 | 山田 | ヤマダ |
The classic use is a sortable reading column next to a Japanese name list — kanji don’t sort phonetically, but their furigana do:
To view or fix the stored reading, select the cell and use Home › Phonetic Guide (フリガナ) › Edit. PHONETIC reports whatever is stored there — including any typos made at entry time.
Try it: interactive PHONETIC demo
Pick a Japanese word and how it got into the cell. Watch what PHONETIC can — and cannot — return.
Errors & common pitfalls
Pitfall: imported text has no phonetic data. This is the number-one surprise. Furigana are captured at typing time by the IME. Text pasted from the web, loaded from CSV, or produced by a formula carries none — PHONETIC simply returns the original characters. There is no formula that can reconstruct the reading; it must be re-typed or added via Home › Phonetic Guide.
Pitfall: it works on references only. =PHONETIC("東京") is invalid — a literal string has nowhere to store furigana. Point the function at a cell.
Pitfall: the reading reflects how it was typed. If the typist entered an unusual reading to reach the right kanji, PHONETIC reports that reading. Audit name lists with Home › Phonetic Guide › Show to display furigana above the cells.
Pitfall: expecting it to romanise or translate. PHONETIC outputs kana readings, not rōmaji and not English. On a system with no East Asian input it has nothing to extract and is effectively a no-op.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
Why does PHONETIC just return my original text?
How do I sort a Japanese name list in reading order?
=PHONETIC(A2) and sort by it. Kanji sort by character code, which is meaningless for names; the furigana column sorts in proper kana order. Excel’s Sort dialog can also use furigana directly — the helper column just makes it visible and auditable.Can I change whether PHONETIC returns hiragana or katakana?
Does PHONETIC work outside Japanese?
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