Share this article:

What it does: The CHAR() returns the character specified by a number.

Plain English: When you see CHAR(), think CHARACTER. While it’s easily to visualize alphabetical characters (A,B,C,a,b,c,etc…), what about punctuation (dashes, quotes, parentheses) or things like carriage returns and mathematical symbols? The CHAR() function is a very magical way to add these characters (or just normal letters) to your text strings.

  • CHAR(10) = Carriage Return
  • CHAR(32) = Space
  • CHAR(36) = Dollar Sign

This tool is very helpful  when inserting specific characters into text strings as you clean them up. Within the Concatenate formula, there is no easy to tell the formula to combine together a string, press return, then add another string to form this:

Mary had a little lamb

Her fleece was white as snow

Creating the above text is only possible by utilizing the CHAR() formula, specifically CHAR(10) in between the two text strings.

Arguments: CHAR(number)

  • number – the character number that you want the CHAR() formula to generate.