How to remove spaces in Excel

1. Use the "Find and Replace" function to quickly remove spaces, press Ctrl H in the selected area, enter spaces in "Find Content", "Replace with" and leave blank, and click Replace all; 2. Use the TRIM function to clean up the spaces before and after, and enter the formula =TRIM(A1) to retain the normal spaces in the middle; 3. Use Power Query to batch process a large amount of data, and after import, select the column and select "Trim" in the "Conversion" tab and then import it back to Excel; 4. For special spaces, you can use CHAR(160) to find replacement or combine with the CLEAN function to process, such as =TRIM(CLEAN(A1)), which is suitable for data copied from web pages. These methods are suitable for different scenarios and can efficiently remove unnecessary spaces.

Sometimes there are more spaces in Excel tables, which look particularly annoying, especially data copied from elsewhere, which is particularly common. If you want to quickly remove these extra spaces, you don’t need to delete them manually one by one. There are several simple and practical methods in Excel that can directly solve this problem.

Quickly remove spaces with the "Find and Replace" function

This is the most direct way to remove all spaces or spaces at specific locations. For example, if you want to remove all the spaces in a whole column, you can use this method.
Operation steps:

• Select the data area to be processed
• Press Ctrl H to open the "Find and Replace" window
• Enter a space in "Find Content" (press the space bar directly)
• Leave empty in "Replace with"
• Click "Replace All"

This method is suitable for sorting before processing data, especially when there are extra front and back spaces or extra middle spaces in the data, the effect is very obvious.

Use TRIM function to clean up spaces before and after

If you just want to clear out the spaces before and after the cell content, instead of the separating spaces in the middle, the TRIM function is suitable.
For example, the content of cell A1 is "Hello World", with spaces in front and behind. The result is "Hello World" after using the formula =TRIM(A1) .
This function will not remove normal spaces in the middle, but only handles extra spaces at the beginning and end, which is suitable for processing text-like data, such as name, address, product name, etc.

Batch processing of large amounts of data with Power Query

If you often process large batches of data imported from the outside, you may find manual operations too cumbersome. At this time, you can use Power Query to batch remove spaces.
The steps are roughly as follows:

• Import data into Power Query Editor
• Select the column to be processed
• In the Convert tab, select the drop-down menu next to "Format" -> "Lowercase" and select "Trim"
• Finally, click "Close and Upload" to import the processed data back to Excel

This method is suitable for processing thousands of pieces of data, and can save query steps. The next time you refresh it directly, you can automatically process new data.

Note: Some spaces are not "normal spaces"

Sometimes you will find that even though the above method is used, the spaces can't be removed. This may be because those "spaces" are not actually ordinary space characters, but uninterrupted spaces, tabs, or other invisible characters.
At this time, you can try the following method:

• Enter CHAR(160) (uninterrupted space) in the search content and replace it with empty
• Or use the CLEAN function to match TRIM, such as =TRIM(CLEAN(A1))

This kind of problem is more common when copying data from web pages, and you can avoid getting stuck by a little attention.

Basically, these methods are used in different ways to deal with them in different situations. It is not complicated but easy to ignore that some spaces are not as simple as they seem, and you need to pay more attention to the data source and space types.

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