How to partially hide email address in Excel for privacy reasons

[ValMathews]

Hello, everyone. I am not by any means a regular user of Excel spreadsheets. I only use them for Income Statements and Sales reports. I am trying to find a formula to partially hide email addresses of my clients. I know how to partially hide social security numbers by using cell format. I chatted with Microsoft Support, and they showed me how to completely hide email addresses by using ;;; but I only want to partially hide email addresses. Then they told me to do the following: if all your email address are in the data sheet 1, please add a new sheet so the new sheet is a blank spreadsheet and now enter this formula to a cell =LEFT(Sheet1!A1,SEARCH("@",Sheet1!A1,1))&"*****"

However, this did not work on my end. Does anyone have a formula for partially hiding text in a cell, specifically email addresses so that the emails show as the following: valerie@*****

Thanks for your help. It's appreciated.

[#2]

@ValMathews 

The formula works fine for me copy/pasted exactly as you've typed it. I attached a workbook to show the formula that MS suggested.

If you still have trouble, perhaps upload a sample workbook with a few dummy emails and I'm sure myself or another person here could help.

Also, note that it's very difficult to keep someone who has access to open the workbook to get to the data if they want to. So, depending on what level of privacy you need, excel may or may not be a good option.

[#3]

Thanks! And good point!