Excel: replace part of cell's string value

what you're looking for is SUBSTITUTE:

=SUBSTITUTE(A2,"Author","Authoring")

Will substitute Author for Authoring without messing with everything else

What you need to do is as follows:

1. List item
2. Select the entire column by clicking once on the corresponding letter or by simply selecting the cells with your mouse.
3. Press Ctrl+H.
4. You are now in the "Find and Replace" dialog. Write "Author" in the "Find what" text box.
5. Write "Authoring" in the "Replace with" text box.
6. Click the "Replace All" button.

That's it!

I know this is old but I had a similar need for this and I did not want to do the find and replace version. It turns out that you can nest the substitute method like so:

=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(F149, "a", " AM"), "p", " PM")

In my case, I am using excel to view a DBF file and however it was populated has times like this:

9:16a
2:22p

So I just made a new column and put that formula in it to convert it to the excel time format.