How To Use RIGHT function in Excel With Examples

The RIGHT function in Microsoft Excel extracts a specified number of characters from the right side of a text string. It takes two arguments: the text string and the number of characters to extract.

The RIGHT function in Microsoft Excel is a powerful function for extracting text from a cell. It returns a specified number of characters from the end of a string of text. This makes it easy to pull specific information from the end of a long string of text.

For example, RIGHT can extract the domain name from a longer email address. The function takes two arguments, the text string and the number of characters to return. The RIGHT formula is often combined with other text functions, such as LEFT, MID, and FIND, to extract more complex strings of text.

=RIGHT(text, [num_chars])

Parameters:

text: The text string that contains the characters you want to extract.

num_chars (optional): The number of characters you want to extract, starting from the right-most character. If omitted, the default value is 1.

Similar to the LEFT function, the RIGHT formula extracts as many characters as you specify from the cell. The only difference is that this function extracts characters from the right side of the cell. In our example, we need to extract the phone number without the country code.

In the screenshot above we can see that function returned 8 characters from the right side, which is the phone number without the country code. You can mix this example with the count of characters you want to extract there are no limitations. 

1. Open the Excel spreadsheet that contains the data you want to use the RIGHT formula on.
2. Select the cell you want to use the function in.
3. Type in the following formula: =RIGHT(text, [num_chars])
4. Replace “text” with the cell reference of the text string you want to use.
5. Replace “[num_chars]” with the number of characters you want to extract from the right side of the text string.
6. Press Enter to apply the formula.