Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge The next couple of posts will be all about the various functions available in Excel to help you clean data you’ve received from other sources etc. Today we’ll take a look at using TRIM to remove unnecessary spaces.

Related posts:

Data Clean-up in Excel – Left Mid and Right

Data Clean-up in Excel – Left Mid and Right + Search & LEN

TRIM is a relative easy formula to use, to remove unnecessary spaces in your data. Often when downloading bank statements for example, I end up using CTRL+H to replace all funny spaces with “nothing”. But this will definitely work a lot better. Thank goodness we’re never to old to learn.

All you have to do is use =TRIM(cell) and it will remove all spaces at the beginning and end of text strings / words. It will leave single spaces in-between, but will also remove if there are double spaces or more in-between the words. See example below:

Join me tomorrow when we’ll take a look at VLOOKUP formulas.

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but where applicable, to the overall Microsoft Office Suite and SharePoint.