REPLACE

Replace a run of characters at a known position with different text.

Syntax

REPLACE(old_text, start_num, num_chars, new_text)

Argument	Required	Description
`old_text`	Required	The text to modify.
`start_num`	Required	Where the replacement starts, counting from 1.
`num_chars`	Required	How many characters to remove. Zero inserts without removing.
`new_text`	Required	What to put there.

Examples

Every example below was executed against VisiGrid engine 0.31.0 — not transcribed from another vendor's documentation. Reproduce any of them with vgrid calc.

Formula	Result	Notes
`=REPLACE("abcdef",2,3,"X")`	`aXef`	Three characters from position 2 become one.
`=REPLACE("abcdef",1,0,"X")`	`Xabcdef`	Removing zero characters inserts at the front.
`=REPLACE("héllo",2,1,"e")`	`hello`	Positions count characters, so accents behave.

Position, not content

That is the entire distinction from SUBSTITUTE:

=REPLACE("abcdef", 2, 3, "X")          → aXef     by position
=SUBSTITUTE("a-b-c", "-", "+")         → a+b+c    by content

Use REPLACE when the location is fixed and the content varies — masking all but the last four digits of an account number, swapping a fixed-width prefix, blanking a known column of a fixed-format record.

Inserting without deleting

num_chars of 0 inserts rather than replaces, which is how you add a prefix, a separator, or a check character at a known offset:

=REPLACE(A1, 4, 0, "-")     → inserts a hyphen after the third character

Combining with FIND

When the position is not fixed, compute it. FIND or SEARCH locates the boundary and REPLACE acts on it — though for replacing content you have found, SUBSTITUTE is usually more direct.

Excel compatibility

Matches Excel.