So how was your Christmas / New Year break? We had a quiet Christmas. Then we hiked a few mountains and camped in bush for few days. New Year was quiet too (as most of the family & friends are in India, while we are in NZ). As usual, we cooked and ate delicious food, had a few drinks and spent time playing cards, building stuff with Lego and drawing silly portraits of each other. I even squeezed in a bit of cycling.
Let’s talk about the untrimmable spaces.
We all know that TRIM() removes extra spaces from the beginning, ending and middle of a text.
So for example, if A1 has ” something and one more ”
TRIM(A1)
will give “something and one more”
We can use CLEAN() function to remove non-printable characters (like the ASCII codes 0 to 31). Of course, SPACE is technically a printable character, so CLEAN() won’t remove spaces.
The untrimmable spaces…?
The other day Sreekanth emailed me a sample of data and asked, “how do I remove the spaces in this list and convert them to numbers?”
Naturally I tried to TRIM().
But the data won’t budge. See below.
Hmm, let’s investigate why.
By using CODE(LEFT(B4,1)), we can check the code for the very first character in the value ” 4,124,500.00 ”
It is 160.
Hmm, 160, where have I met you before?
Poking in the Insert > Symbol tells us that 160 is the no break space. What an appropriate name that is.
In fact no break space is HTML character ie spaces printed on a web page. (Just to be clear not every space on a web page is char 160, but sometimes you have instead of SPACE.)
So how to remove the no break spaces?
Simple, we use SUBSTITUTE().
The formula =SUBSTITUTE(B4,CHAR(160),””) removes all the CHAR(160)s from B4.
But we want the number…
We can add one extra step to the above SUBSTITUTE() formula to convert text in B4 to number.
The below formula does the trick.
=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(B4,CHAR(160),””),”-“,””)+0
It replaces all CHAR(160)s and -s with blanks and then adds 0 to the resulting text thus forcing Excel to convert text to number. Bingo.
So there you go. For every byte of dirty data that sneaks in to Excel, there are eight ways to fight it out, at least.
Download Example Workbook
If all this space business sounds like rocket science, then check out the example workbook to understand the formulas better.
How do you remove untrimmable spaces?
If it is a one time job, I usually rely on Find Replace to get rid of any symbols, characters or phrases. But if I have lots of data or changing data, I use SUBSTITUTE, TRIM, CLEAN.
What about you? How do you remove untrimmable spaces? Please share your tips in the comments.
22 Responses to “Master Excel 2007 Ribbon with this Free Learning Guide”
Thank you, kind sir. Well done with the baby making.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001@hotmail.com. never a response.
I cannot get signed up for your newsletter. I tied both this email address and churchill2001_at_hotmail_dot_com. never a response for either attempt.
@Doug, it shows that your email address is pending verification. Can you check your inbox (and may be spam folder too) for an email from me? The subject will be "Activate Subscription to Get your Free Excel Tips E-book"
[...] PPS: If you are struggling with ribbon, you should check out ribbon learning guide. [...]
Very Useful Info..Keep it up..
@Ajay.. you are welcome 🙂
how do u download microsoft excel for free?
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
Select Office
Free Trial
[...] Excel 2010 UI looks considerably better and less stressful than 2007. The colors are dull and subtle. The icons don’t call for attention unless you want to do something. The menus / ribbons feel smoother and slicker. [Learn to use Excel Ribbon with this Free e-Book] [...]
I can't open this pdf. I get the error message:
You do not have the required license to open this file.
Please request a license from the creator of the file, and add it using the license manager and they try opening it again.
What gives??
I downloaded the file again and it worked this time. Strange. (First file was 116 KB, second was 1644 KB... ???)
[...] More ribbon goodness | Free e-book to learn Excel Ribbon [...]
Hi Chandoo,
thanks for sharing your Excel 2007 learning experience with us; unfortunately the link to the pdf of the free Excel 2007 learning guide seems broken: my Acrobate Readers flags: "Unkown file type or corrupte data".
Have a nice day
Michael
well done this is great
Can somebody just provide a link the classic TAB exportedUI files for MS Office 2003 for us to use in office 2007/2010?. searching online, everybody just wnats to make a buck online with silly Classic Tab installers which do nothing more than inport exportedUI files for you.
Don't give me a ribbon how to guide, just give me free exportedUI files. I should not have to pay anyone for this, it is free XML, MS should have included this to begin with.
thanks
Dear.
There are a set of debit values and a set ot credit values in a column. I want a vba code by whcich the debit value plus a single / multiple credit value is zero that needs to be marked .
finally i will come to know out of the avaibale debits which cannot be used the with avilable credits either single or multiple values.
If multiple matching sets are available let it take the 1st or the 2nd one its not an issue.
Column A Ref
-1000 A
-5000 B
-8000 C
800 A
100 A
100 A
2000 B
3000 B
13000
15000
hi...
how to make this add-ins and display in ribbon... check this sample : http://www.cprsoft.com/GCDemo01.htm
thank you sir...
Please tell me format painter short cut key In excel ?
Thanks In Advance
thankfully.likeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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