Remove Text In Parentheses From A Cell

All versions

Exports love to tack notes onto names: "Acme Widgets (formerly Acme Co.)", "Jordan Lee (Sales)". You want the clean name for a lookup or a mail merge. Find where the parenthesis starts, keep everything to its left, trim the trailing space — and make sure the rows that never had a parenthesis come through unchanged instead of erroring.

Quick formula: Everything before the first opening parenthesis, trimmed:

=TRIM(LEFT(A2,FIND("(",A2&"(")-1))

"Acme Widgets (formerly Acme Co.)" becomes Acme Widgets. "Plain Name" stays "Plain Name" because the appended "(" gives FIND something to find.

Functions used (tap for the full reference guide):

FIND LEFT TRIM MID

The example

Three rows of a vendor list. Two have notes in parentheses; one does not and must survive the formula.

	A	B
1	Raw name	Clean name
2	Acme Widgets (formerly Acme Co.)	Acme Widgets
3	Jordan Lee (Sales)	Jordan Lee
4	Plain Name	Plain Name

The formula

One formula, filled down:

=TRIM(LEFT(A2,FIND("(",A2&"(")-1)) // text before the first ( , with the trailing space removed

How it works

Read it from the inside out:

A2&"(" appends an opening parenthesis to the text. On "Plain Name" it becomes "Plain Name(", so FIND always succeeds instead of returning #VALUE!.
FIND("(", ...) returns the position of the first parenthesis: 14 in "Acme Widgets (formerly...", and 11 — one past the end — in "Plain Name(".
LEFT(A2, ...-1) keeps everything before that position: "Acme Widgets " with a trailing space, or all of "Plain Name".
TRIM removes the trailing space and any doubled spaces. The clean name is ready for a lookup key.

FIND is case-sensitive, which does not matter for a parenthesis, but it also stops at the first one. If the parenthetical is in the middle of the text, use the variation below to keep what comes after it.

Try it: interactive demo

Interactive

Type any text with a note in parentheses.

Raw text

Variations

Parenthetical in the middle

Keep the text after the closing parenthesis too. "Acme (TX) Widgets" becomes "Acme Widgets".

=TRIM(LEFT(A2,FIND("(",A2&"(")-1)&MID(A2,FIND(")",A2&")")+1,LEN(A2)))

Excel 365: TEXTBEFORE

TEXTBEFORE does the append trick for you with its if_not_found argument.

=TRIM(TEXTBEFORE(A2,"(",,,,A2))

Pitfalls & errors

Without the &"(" append, every row that has no parenthesis returns #VALUE!. It is the most common reason this formula "works on some rows".

Square brackets or dashes instead of parentheses? Change the two "(" characters to "[" or " - ". The structure is identical.

If the text starts with a parenthesis, LEFT returns an empty string. Decide whether that is what you want or wrap it: IF(B2="",A2,B2).

Practice workbook

📊

Download the free Remove Text In Parentheses From A Cell practice workbook

Edit the yellow raw-name cells; the clean name recalculates.

Frequently asked questions

Why FIND and not SEARCH?

Either works for a parenthesis. SEARCH is case-insensitive and accepts wildcards, which you do not need here. FIND is slightly faster and makes it clear you mean a literal character.

Can I remove the parenthetical and keep it in another column?

Yes: the extract-in-parentheses recipe pulls out the inside of the parentheses with MID and FIND. Use both formulas side by side to split "Jordan Lee (Sales)" into a name column and a department column.

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Function references: FIND LEFT TRIM MID