How to Remove Accents in Excel (café → cafe)
Fold accented letters to plain ASCII so your lookups match, your duplicates collapse, and fussy systems stop rejecting the import.
Last updated: August 2026
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| café · Zürich · José | → | cafe · Zurich · Jose |
| Peña · Łódź · Œuvre | → | Pena · Lodz · Oeuvre |
Method 1 — nested SUBSTITUTE (any version)
- Wrap the cell in one
SUBSTITUTEper accented letter:=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"é","e"),"ü","u"),"ñ","n") - Keep adding layers for every accent that appears in your data.
- Copy the formula column, then Paste Special ▸ Values over the original.
It works for a handful of accents, but the formula balloons fast and you'll miss any accent you didn't list — and there are dozens.
Method 2 — a VBA macro
A short function using StrConv or Unicode normalization can strip diacritics from an entire column in one pass. Reliable, but it needs macros enabled and a saved .xlsm — a non-starter on Excel for the web or a locked-down machine.
The one-click way — Tellsheet's Remove Accents
Select the column and click Remove Accents. Every accented letter folds to its plain-ASCII equivalent — café → cafe, Zürich → Zurich — across the whole selection at once, with a preview and full revert. No formula to maintain, no macro to enable, and it runs entirely on your PC on Excel for Windows, Mac, and the web.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a function in Excel to remove accents?
No single built-in does it. Chain SUBSTITUTE per character, write a VBA macro, or use Tellsheet's Remove Accents to fold them all in one step.
Why remove accents from my data?
Accents break matching and dedup — José vs Jose — and some systems reject non-ASCII on import. Folding them gives clean, comparable keys.
Will it change letters I want to keep?
It maps each accented letter to its closest plain letter. It's built for match keys and imports, so keep a copy if the accented spelling matters for display.
Related Excel guides
Clean, comparable text keys
Get Tellsheet and fold accents to ASCII in one click — for matching, dedup, and imports — with a preview before every change and nothing leaving your PC.
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