how to remove ? sign

[koi]

Hi All,

just got this problem today, i have a list from A1:A20 contain a number from 1 to 1000, but some of the number ended with ? like 10?, 109? 1? etc

when i filter them and put ? in the filter its not working, and seems like ctrl+h and replace ? with blank also not working.

do you have any ideas how to quickly remove those ?

all i can think now is using substitute...

thanks

 

[NARAYANK991]

Hi ,

When you use CTRL H , use ~? ( tilde followed by the question mark ) instead of just the question mark , since the ? character is a wild-card character , and will replace everything !

Narayan

 

[koi]

hi Narayan,

thanks for the answer, its solved my problem

regards,

 

[ThrottleWorks]

Narayan Sir, I also tried your solution using dummy data, it is working fine.

Sir, what is the significane of ~ (tilde) does it remove ?'s wild card functionality.

It is not urgent, just asked as curiosity.

P.S. - I tried searching it on "Bing" but did not get any results.
Sometimes "Google" does not work in the office.

 

[NARAYANK991]

Hi Sachin ,

I think the tilde sign tells Excel to interpret the symbol which follows it literally i.e. ~? makes Excel use the ? character as a question mark character , and not as a wild-card character.

Authentic information is here :

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/63807

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214138

Narayan

 

[ThrottleWorks]

Sir, thanks for the help.

 

[SirJB7]

Hi, sachinbizboy!
That technique is called escaping or escaped sequence, and it's used in other contexts too where the escaping character may vary (sometimes a backslash, others an Esc character). It tells the function that the character following the escape character should be treated as text and not as an special char.
Regards!