True story:
On Friday (17th April – 2015), I flew from Vizag (my town) to Hyderabad so that I can catch a flight to San Francisco to attend a conference. As I had 10 hours of overlay between the flights in Hyderabad, I checked in to a lounge area so that I can watch some sports, eat food while pretending to do work on my laptop. There was a gentleman sitting in adjacent space doing some work in Excel. As I began to compose few emails, the gentleman in next sitting space asked me what I do for living. Our conversation went like this.
Me: I run a software company
He: Oh, so you must be good with computers
Me: smiles and cringes at the stereotyping
He: What is the formula to select all the blank cells in my Excel data and highlight them in Yellow color
Mind you, he had no idea that I work in Excel. We were 2 random guys in airport lounge watching sports and eating miserable food.
Me: Well, what are you trying to do?
He: You see, I am auditing this data. I need to locate all the blank rows and set them in different color so that my staff can fill up missing information. Right now, I am selecting one row at a time and filling the colors. Is there a one step solution to this problem?
Needless to say, I showed him how to do it faster, which led to an interesting 3 hours at the lounge.
End of true story.
So today, let’s understand how to find & highlight all the blank cells in the data.
Let’s take a look at the data:
Here is a sample of data.
One important thing to keep in mind:
- This data is not structured as table.
There are 3 powerful & simple methods to find & highlight blank cells.
Method 1: Selection & Highlight approach
In this method, we just select all the blank cells in one go and fill them with yellow color.
First select the entire range of cells where you data is located. Using CTRL+Arrow keys is not going to work because of the blank cells in-between. Instead, follow this:
- Select the top-left cell of your data (say B2)
- Click and drag the little rectangular box in vertical-scrollbar all the way down.
- Hold Shift and click on the very last cell (bottom-right)
Now that all the data is selected,
- Press F5 and click on Special
- Choose blanks. Click ok.
- This will select only the blank cells.
- Fill yellow (or other) color by clicking the fill icon and selecting the color
- Done!
Here is a quick demo of this:
Method 2: Filter approach
The above approach (selection & highlight) works fine if you care about blank cells anywhere. What if you just want to find & highlight only rows have blanks in a certain column. Say, you want to highlight all rows where comments are empty.
In this case,
- Select all data using the steps in method 1.
- Press CTRL+Shift+L to activate filters
- Keep the selection on & Filter the column you want to show only blank values
- Now fill yellow color
- Done!
Method 3: Conditional formatting approach
Both method 1 & method 2 have a draw back. If your data changes, you must clean up & highlight again.
This is where conditional formatting shines. You can tell Excel to highlight cells only if they are blank. Once some data is typed in (or copy pasted or connection refreshed), the color will go away automatically.
To set up conditional formatting,
- Select all the data
- Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New rule
- Click on “Format only cells that contain”
- Change “Cell Value” option to “Blanks”
- Set up formatting you want by clicking on Formatting button
- Click ok and you are done!
This will automatically highlight all blank cells in your favorite color.
Oh wait, what if I want to highlight entire row if a certain column is blank?
You can use conditional formatting in such cases too. Follow these steps.
Assuming you want to check for blanks in Column G and your first data point is in G4.
- Select all the data (just data, no headers)
- Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New rule
- Select rule type as “Use a formula…”
- Type the formula as
=LEN($G4)=0 - Set up formatting you want
- Click ok and you are done.
Wait a sec, What is the LEN($G4)=0 thing?
LEN() formula tells us what is the length of a cell’s content. So if a cell is blank, LEN(cell) would be 0.
$G4 is a mixed reference style. This way, even when conditional formatting is checking other columns, it still looks in column G to see if that is really empty.
Related: An introduction to Excel cell references.
Bonus tips:
Q) How to highlight if either of column G or H are blank?
A) =OR(LEN($G4)=0, LEN($H4)=0)
Q) How to highlight if both column G & H are blank?
A) =AND(LEN($G4)=0, LEN($H4)=0)
Go ahead and whack them blank cells.
How do you deal with blank cells?
Do you sneak up on an unsuspecting fellow passenger in an airport lounge and ask them how to deal with the blank problem? Do you manually select the blank cells and deal with them one at a time? Or do you use some ninja level trickery to fix the blanks?
Go ahead and tell me your blank story in the comments.
Fill the blanks in your Excel knowledge
If you have gaps in your Excel know-how, then you have come to right place. Use below links and fill those blanks.
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