How to Only Allow Alphanumeric Characters Entry in Excel?


Excel is a robust spreadsheet programme that is frequently used to manage data and carry out calculations. To guarantee data consistency and integrity when using Excel, it is frequently important to limit data entry to a certain set of characters or forms. One typical requirement is to restrict the input of certain cells or ranges to alphanumeric characters, which comprise both letters and numbers.

This tutorial will walk you through setting up data validation rules in Excel to restrict input to only alphanumeric characters for specific cells. This guide will walk you through each stage of the process, whether you're making a data entry form, constructing a spreadsheet for data validation, or just want to require alphanumeric data input. So let's get started and discover how to make sure that Excel only accepts alphanumeric characters!

Only Allow Alphanumeric Characters Entry

Here we will first select the range of cells, then use the data validation to complete the task. So let us see a simple process to know how you can only allow alphanumeric characters in Excel.

Step 1

Consider any Excel sheet. First, select the range of cells where you need to enter the data, then click on Data Validation under Data.

Data > Data Validation.

Step 2

Then set Allow to Custom and enter the formula as

=AND(ISERROR(SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(MID(A2,ROW($1:$100),1), "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789")))), NOT(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(" ", A2))))

then click Ok to complete the task.

Allow > Formula > Ok.

Step 3

From now on, when you enter other values then alphanumeric error will be generated.

This is how you can only allow alphanumeric characters in Excel.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have used a simple example to demonstrate how you can only allow alphanumeric characters to be entered in Excel to highlight a particular set of data.

Updated on: 25-Aug-2023

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