Summary

The Excel ENCODEURL function returns a URL-encoded string composed of US-ASCII characters. ENCODEURL is only available in Excel 2013 and later on Windows.

Purpose 

Get URL-encoded string

Return value 

Encoded text

Syntax

=ENCODEURL(text)
  • text - The text to be encoded.

How to use 

The ENCODEURL function returns a URL-encoded string composed of US-ASCII characters. URL encoding, sometimes called "percent encoding" is a method of encoding characters in a URL using only legal US-ASCII characters. Some characters cannot be part of a URL and are "reserved". Only characters that are  reserved are encoded by ENCODEURL; other characters are left untouched. Common reserved characters include the space character (" "), the forward slash "/", the hash character (#) and others as shown in the example above.

Example

To use ENCODEURL, supply text or a cell reference that contains text. In the example below, ENCODEURL is used to encode the text "Hello World!"

=ENCODEURL("Hello World!") // returns "Hello%20World%21"

In the example at the top of the page, the formula in cell C5, copied down is:

=ENCODEURL(B5)

At each new row, ENCODEURL returns the encoded text from column B. 

Reserved characters

The table below shows a list of reserved characters and their url-encoded equivalent.

Character Encoding
! %21
# %23
$ %24
% %25
& %26
' %27
( %28
) %29
* %2A
+ %2B
, %2C
/ %2F
: %3A
; %3B
= %3D
? %3F
@ %40
[ %5B
] %5D
  %20
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Dave Bruns

Hi - I'm Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.