Remove and Replace Special Characters in a SQL Server Column

Here’s a sample output of a SQL Server Column containing special characters, obtained from different sources.

As you can observe, the format of the numbers is not uniform. What is needed is a uniform format like 111-111-1111

Here’s how to remove and replace these special characters using REPLACE to obtain the desired output:

-- SAMPLE DATA
DECLARE @TT TABLE (Phone varchar(15))
INSERT INTO @TT VALUES
('(100)-111-2222'),
('(101)111-2222'),
('111-111-2222'),
('(110)-100-2222'),
('(111)111-2222'),
('112-111-2222'),
('(121)111-2222')

-- QUERY
SELECT
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
Phone,
'(', '' ),
')-', '-' ),
')', '-' ) as Phone
FROM @TT

OUTPUT

Note: This approach works well when the number of characters to be replaced are few.

About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, MCSE, is the founder of DotNetCurry, DNC Magazine for Developers, SQLServerCurry and DevCurry. He has also authored a couple of books 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls and a new one recently at The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Suprotim has received the prestigous Microsoft MVP award for nine times in a row now. In a professional capacity, he is the CEO of A2Z Knowledge Visuals Pvt Ltd, a digital group that represents premium web sites and digital publications comprising of Professional web, windows, mobile and cloud developers, technical managers, and architects.

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