Remove Unwanted Characters From Text

Remove specific characters from your text with this free online tool. Perfect for cleaning data, removing unwanted symbols, or preparing text for processing.

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Cleaned text
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Frequently asked questions

How do I specify what should be removed?

Type them into the field, one after another with nothing between them - @#$%, not @, #, $, %. Every occurrence of each one is taken out of the text, and every character is read literally, so you never have to escape anything.

Can I remove all digits or all punctuation in one go?

Yes. Enter the full set in one go, such as all ten digits, and they are handled in a single pass. Worth remembering for text copied out of a word processor: the quotes and dashes in it are often the curly and long versions rather than the ones on your keyboard, so paste them in from the text itself rather than typing them.

How do I keep only certain characters instead?

Switch to Keep only these characters at the top. Everything you have not named is dropped rather than kept, which is the shorter way round whenever the list of things you want is smaller than the list of things you don't. Spaces and line breaks can be held on to separately, so the words do not run together.

Is it case sensitive?

That is up to you. Case sensitive is on by default, so an a and an A are treated as different characters. Switch it off and naming one case takes out both. For characters you cannot type because you cannot see them, use the Invisible Character Remover instead.

Will it break emoji or accented letters?

No. The text is read one whole character at a time rather than one byte at a time, so an emoji is taken out in one piece or left alone in one piece. Nothing is ever cut in half and left as a broken character.

Does a hyphen mean a range, the way it does in a search pattern?

No. Every character you type is taken literally, so entering a-z removes the letter a, the hyphen and the letter z, and nothing in between. If you want a whole alphabet gone, paste it in.