Ok, Coffee can be one of them, but may be after the 3rd mug of the day, you will ask the question, “so, what are the productivity secrets of Excel 2007?”.
That, my friend, is the reason why you should put aside the mug and read this post carefully. The post is pure filtered decoction of tips you must sip.
if you like this post (or for that matter if you like coffee) please add it to your delicious bookmarks or stumble it or tweet it.
Thanks, You are beautiful.
Turn on the Clipboard pane, Copy paste like there is no tomorrow
We all swear by ctrl+c, ctrl+v. A large part of my MBA case studies were submitted intime thanks only to the awesome clipboard. But do you know that you can turn on the clipboard feature in Excel 2007 in a full panel view and use it to speed up the copy paste activity.
Hold Down ALT to see what keyboard shortcuts are available, press key and you will see more
All you have to do is hold the ALT key down. And I can bet that you will learn a fun and simple keyboard shortcut for something that you use everyday. What more, in Excel 2007 you can use most of the Excel 2003 (and earlier) keyboard shortcuts.
Lock a feature to Boost up your performance, for eg. lock format painter and paste formats everywhere
When you need to perform certain action several times, like for eg. if you want to paste the same formatting over 40 different cells, you can lock the format painter by double clicking on it. See the screencast to understand how it works.
(When you can inserting shapes etc, you can use “lock drawing mode” option from right click menu)
Make your charts and tables go everywhere, copy them as pictures
When you copy a chart / table of cells as picture, they take less space and look lot better when pasted.
Add Invisible / Hidden features to your Quick Access Toolbar
You can add hidden features of excel 2007 like camera tool etc. to the quick access toolbar (the tools that you usually see next to office button). Just click on the office button > Excel options > Customize and select “commands not in the ribbon”. These are the features that are not usually shown on ribbon (some of them are shown when you lets say select a chart or table or something like that).
Move the Quick Access Toolbar down to save mouse travel time
I think that title says it all. See the image.
Always save the files in Excel 2003-97 compatible mode
Very useful if your colleagues / clients are still using old versions. Just go to Office button > Excel Options > Save and change the file type to Excel 2003-97.
Click on the corner of a group of Ribbon Icons to launch its UI
This is not applicable for all groups. But for some groups of icons you see a little squarish icon on the bottom right corner. Just hit it to launch a friendly office 2003ish looking dialog to make changes to the settings etc.
Add chart related options to Quick Access Toolbar to save time
If you make a lot of charts, then it pays to add the chart related options like “adding error bars”, “adding axis” etc. to the quick access toolbar. Then you can press ALT+number to activate this feature and work with it without even moving your mouse.
Create a named range quickly by typing the name in the corner of formula bar
You can quickly create a named range by selecting a bunch of cells and typing the name in the formula bar’s left hand corner where usually cell address’ is displayed.
See the screencast.
BONUS: Enable Developer Ribbon Toolbar in Excel 2007
If you in to mochas and trying to explore macros, then this one is for you. Enable the Developer toolbar from Excel options > Popular and you can play with all those form controls and macros.
More Tips and Tricks on using Microsoft Excel
Did you enjoy the post? Do you want more ? Well, it is not coffee, so you can consume as much as you want. Start with these and see where your mouse takes you.
Excel Productivity – Advanced Tips & Tricks
Excel can be Exciting – 15 hacks you don’t know
100 Excel Tips, Tricks and Resources
Sign up today and recieve an E-book with 95 Excel & Charting Tips
20 Responses to “Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula”
Hi Chandoo,
First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Wish you and your family another fruitful year ahead.
To answer your question: Power Query is the best way to trim. 🙂
Btw, if Power Query is not available, then formula would absolutely do... but did you forget to mention also Char 32?
One more question: Is the trailing minus meant to be a negative number? Maybe only the sender knows... 🙂
Cheers,
I just see your PQ way, it is amazing, I think it is the most simple way.
No idea how it did it?
I know these spaces can be a real pain but these days I advise Excel users to learn and use Flash Fill and that will learn what to do pretty quickly.
Highlight range to be cleaned. Then, in Replace, hold down the Alt key and type 0160. Replace with nothing.
I accomplished this by writing a macro to go through all the possible unprintable characters. Looped through the range.
@Steve
Brute force works just as well, its just slower
I use a different method here. First, I will copy the data from Excel and paste it in a notepad. In Notepad, I will do a Find Blanks (Space " ") and Replace (Empty) with nothing.
Then you can copy the data from Notepad and paste it back to Excel which will be a perfect number as you desire.
But Thanks for the formula. Its probably the 2nd out of 8 tricks as Chandoo mentioned. Waiting for the rest among 8 from other users 🙂
Hi....
You don't always need notepad for that. I use the Find/Replace is Excel works just fine.
I don't understand the x's. Why weren't they removed in the formula? Or are they part of some sort of numeric formatting that I'm not familiar with? I saw how you handled the non-breaking spaces and the dashes, but am confused about what role the x's played in all this.
Thanks!
Hi Andrew ,
The xs have been used solely to demarcate the actual data text ; thus , without the x in place at the end of text , as in :
x 4,124,500.00 x
it would be impossible to know that there are unwanted trailing characters , in this case , after the last 0.
These xs are not part of the original data text , nor are they used in the formulae ; they are put in only so that readers can visualize the individual items of data as they are in practice. Think of them as imaginary delimiters.
Oh, that makes sense! Thank you for the explanation. I had a feeling it was something along those lines.
You can type this character using the Keys Alt+0160.
Very useful to replace this Character using Find and Select resource.
For many years, my jobs have included ETL tasks and I built this macro to help long, long ago. I tweak it every now and again. Many co-workers, past and present, have it wired to a button on their toolbar.
Sub Clean_and_Trim()
'CAUTION: Strips leading zeroes -- do not use on zipcodes, etc.
If Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
Revert = 1
ElseIf Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual Then
Revert = 0
End If
For Each Cell In Selection
For x = Len(Cell.Value) To 1 Step -1
If Asc(Mid(Cell.Value, x, 1)) = 160 Then
Cell.Replace What:=Chr(160), Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, MatchCase:=True
End If
If Asc(Mid(Cell.Value, x, 1)) = 32 Then
Cell.Replace What:=Chr(32), Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, MatchCase:=True
End If
Next x
If Cell.Value "" Then
Cell.Value = Application.Clean(Application.Trim(Cell.Value))
End If
Next
If Revert = 1 Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
ElseIf Revert = 0 Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
End If
End Sub
This is awesome! What if you have several characters you need to have removed? What would be the easiest way as I can imagine there are several ways.?
# - 35
$ - 36
- 62
/ - 47
, - 44
. - 46
" - 34
: - 58
This is typical case of a Fitbit data export to Csv file. Each number has CHAR160 as thousand separator.. how smart Fitbit, thank you 😉
By the way, i prefer to copy the character, and use find and replace.
Sometimes it happens if you copy a table from outlook and paste it in excel. When you apply formula on those cells you will get error. What i use to do is
copy one character that looks like space,
select the entire range,
go to Find and replace,
Paste the copied character in Find option
Leave the replace option unfilled..
click on replace all..
All the errors shall be converted in to proper values..
Process looks lengthier.. but it is one of the simplest method
If Clean, Trim, and Substitute, or Find and Replace does not complete the job, I usually enter a value of 1 in an empty cell. Copy the Value of 1, Highlight the range of text numbers, and Paste Special, Values, Multiply. This site is great!
You can use Dose for Excel Add-In that can quickly clean huge data with one click besides more than +100 new functions and features to add to your Excel to save time and effort.
https://www.zbrainsoft.com
Hi,
I have a problem in excel. The sheet attached herewith.
TABLE CONFIG 2/6
A B C D E F G H
1 WEIGHT1 43,599 WEIGH2 62500 WEIGHT3 77000 WEIGHT4 66,500
2 DEDUCTION1 15,000 DEDUCTION1 15,000 TEMP 0 DEDUCTION2 11,005
3 RESULT 58,599 RESULT-1 77,500 RESULT-2 77,000 RESULT-3 77,505
4 RESULT SUBSTRACT 0 0 0
5 REQUIRED VALUE 77,500 77,000 77,505
Note: 1- RESULT (58599) IS TO BE DEDUCTION EITHER FROM D4 OR F4 OR H4 WHICHEVER IS MOST
LEAST CELL AMONG RESULT-1 OR RESULT-2 OR RESULT 3.
2-HENCE, RESULT VALUE $B$3 IS TO BE PRESENTED ON CELL EITHER D4 OR F4 OR H4 WHICHER IS
MOST LEAST VALUE
3-FORMULA =IF(E8<H8,$B$9,IF(E8<J8,$B$9,IF(H8<J8,$B$9,IF(H8<E8,$B$9,IF(J8<H8,$B$9))))))
CREATED ON CELL D4,F4 & H4 DID NOT WORK.
PLS FOR YOUR HELP.
THANK YOU
@R
Why not ask the question in the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
You can attach a file there