3 ways to remove spaces between words / numbers in Excel cells
3 quick ways to remove extra spaces between words or delete all spaces from Excel cells. You can use trim formula, Excel Find & replace or special Excel add-in to clean up cells' content.
When you paste data from an external source to an Excel spreadsheet (plain text reports, numbers from web pages, etc.), you are likely to get extra spaces along with important data. There can be leading and trailing spaces, several blanks between words and thousand separators for numbers.
Consequently, your table looks disorderly and becomes difficult to use. It may be a challenge to find a customer in the Name column since you search for "John Doe" which has no excess spaces between the names while the way it looks in your table is "John Doe". Or numbers can't be summed up, and again extra blanks are the ones to blame.
In this article you'll find how to clean up your data.
Trim blanks between words to 1, remove trailing / leading spaces
For example, you have a table with 2 columns. In the column Name, the first cell contains "John Doe" written correctly without excess spaces. All other cells have extra blanks between the first and the last names. At the same time these cells have irrelevant blanks before and after the full names known as leading and trailing spaces. The second column is called Length and shows the number of symbols in each name:
Use the Trim formula to remove extra spaces
Excel has the Trim formula to use for deleting extra spaces from text. Below you can find the steps showing how to use this option:
- Add the helper column to the end of your data. You can name it "Trim".
- In the first cell of the helper column (C2), enter the formula to trim excess spaces
=TRIM(A2)
- Copy the formula across the other cells in the column. Feel free to use some tips from Enter the same formula into all selected cells at a time.
- Replace the original column with the one that has the cleaned data. Select all cells in the helper column and press Ctrl + C to copy data to clipboard.
Now pick the first cell in the original column and press Shift + F10 or the menu button
. Then just press V.
- Remove the helper column.
That's it! We deleted all excess blanks with the help of the formula trim(). Unfortunately, it's a bit time-consuming, especially if your spreadsheet is rather big.
Note: If after using the formula you still see extra spaces (the last cell on the screenshot), please have a look at If the TRIM Function Doesn't Work
Using Find & Replace to remove extra spaces between words
This option needs fewer steps, but allows only deleting excess spaces between words. Leading and trailing spaces will also be trimmed to 1, but will not be removed.
- Select one or several columns with the data to delete spaces between words.
- Press Ctrl + H to get the "Find and Replace" dialog box.
- Press the Space bar twice in the Find What field and once in Replace With
- Click on the "Replace all" button, and then press Ok to close Excel confirmation dialog.
- Repeat step 4 until you see the message "We couldn't find anything to replace." :)
3 clicks to neat data with Cell Cleaner add-in
If you often import data to Excel from external sources and spend much time polishing up your tables, check out Cell Cleaner add-in for Excel.
This helpful tool will clean data imported from web or any other external source. It removes leading and trailing spaces, excess blanks between words, non-breaking spaces, line breaks, non-printing symbols and other unwanted characters. This add-in also converts words to UPPER, lower or Proper Case. And if you need to change text numbers back to number format and delete apostrophes, this will not be a problem.
- Download and install Cell Cleaner add-in for Excel.
- Select the range in your table where you want to remove excess spaces. For new tables I usually press Ctrl + A to process all columns in a go.
- Go to Ablebits Data tab and click on the Trim Spaces icon
- The Cell Cleaner pane will open on the left side of your worksheet. Just select the needed checkboxes, click the Trim button and enjoy your perfectly cleaned table.
Isn't it faster than with the two previous tips? If you always deal with data processing, this tool will save you hours of precious time.
Remove all spaces between numbers
Suppose, you have a workbook with numbers where the digits (thousands, millions, billions) are separated with spaces. Thus Excel sees numbers as text and no math operation can be performed.
The easiest way to get rid of excess spaces is using the standard Excel Find & Replace option:
- Press Ctrl + Space to select all cells in a column.
- Press Ctrl + H to open the "Find & Replace" dialog box.
- Press Space bar in the Find What field and make sure the "Replace with" field is empty.
- Click on the "Replace all" button, and then press Ok. Voila! All spaces are removed.
Using formula to remove all spaces
You may need to delete all blanks, like in a formula chain. To do this, you can create a helper column and enter the formula: =SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")
Here A1 is the first cell of the column with numbers or words where all spaces must be deleted.
Then follow the steps from the part using formula to remove extra spaces between words to 1
Video: how to remove spaces in Excel
You may also be interested in:
187 responses to "3 ways to remove spaces between words / numbers in Excel cells"
Just wanted to give my thanks. That SUBSTITUTE command just saved 2 days of data inputting in a 2000 rows spreadsheet.
Is there a formula or a function that can be placed into a cell in excel that will automatically restrict space entery, at the time that data is being entered, to 1 space between characters.
Also how would I lock the formulas in cells, so they cannot be changed but allow data entery into the cell.
Many thanks
You can lock cells easily enough. Just right click the cell (or group of cells) and select format cells. Go to the protection tab and check the locked box. Note by default ALL cells are typically set. So really you have to unlock the cells you want to be able to change.
After you've made your sections go to file -> protect workbook. You can select a workbook, sheet whatever... once you've done that the cells will not be changeable unless you go back and undo the protection again via file -> protect. Optionally you can put a password on the protection to keep users out of modifications.
I can still see trailing spaces on my spreadsheets after removing them via Find and replace method. Please help
I had the same issue. Here is what u can do, select (highlight) the "space" after the data and copy (ctrl+c). Then in find and replace, paste (ctrl+v) the "space" that u have copied into the "Find What" and leave the "Replace With" empty.
Good Luck!
IG:Mokhschild
Brilliant, just fixed my problems too! Seems the "spaces" weren't spaces
Microsoft Docs contributor guide overview - Contributor Guide | Microsoft Docs
Excellent! It helped a lot. Thanks, thanks...
Super, thanks!
Thank you as this thread just fixed my problems. I would be interested to know what it was that caused that pseudo-space as it was clearly a space to me.
GREAT! That was exactly what I needed to do to erase the pesky space at the beginning of each cell in my sheet. Thanks!
How to remove spaces in excel
Ex: i have an excel sheet which is in 10 thousand phone numbers in a sheet but the sheet having more spaces.spaces means not a front space and back space,only space from up or above space
like phone number above space and number like this 9999999999,how to remove above space
Space
9999999999----> phone number
Please tell me the formula
Find and replace then press CTRL+J on replace then click the Replace All button.
=SUBSTITUTE(C13," ","")
625 749.41
2 260 216.41
570 246.96
308 608.25
2 084.46
42 840.00
206 271.99
772 026.85
26 735.61
1 493 364.26
193 150.50
how do I convert these to numbers
625 749.41
2 260 216.41
570 246.96
308 608.25
2 084.46
42 840.00
206 271.99
772 026.85
26 735.61
1 493 364.26
193 150.50
Follow same process as explained earlier
This article saved me alot of time and frustration.
1. select the whole column or the cell you want to convert to numbers
2. Right click and then press "Format Cells"
3. click on "Numbers" and adjust the number of decimals you want in the 'Decimal Places'
2415927226.30 how to remove top space??
37820-55C -D250M1
How can i remove space b/w 55c to hyphen with a formula
pls suggest any formula below are more code
37820-55C -D250M1
37820-55C -D550M1
37820-55C -D850M1
37820-55C -N040M1
37820-55C -N210M1
37820-55C -N550M1
37820-55C -N650M1
37820-55C -N710M1
37820-5V6 -D810M1
37820-5XJ -E110M1
37820-5XJ -E210M1
37820-5XJ -E511M1
37820-5XJ -N010M1
37820-5XJ -N110M1
37820-5XJ -N510M1
37820-5XJ -N610M1
Thanks
Search "55C -" Then replace all with "55C-"
This will save me a huge problem from my boss. Huge data supplied came with spaces between phone numbers and we needed to contact them via SMS. Thanks in advance
"
111013491504"
"
111013491515"
"
123016013840"
"
111013491504"
"
1029232644"
"
1029207094"
"
1029183115"
"
1029212005"
"
1029211950"
how can remove this space
select column
Press Ctrl H to open the "Find & Replace"
Press " in the find what field and make sure the Replace with field is empty
Click on the "Replace all" button, and then press Ok. Voila! All spaces are removed.
Select column
press F, dialog box opens, then click on special, then click on blank and click on OK
NOW LEFT CLICK ON BLANK CELL and select delete
select Shift cell up and press OK.
A very handy way to remove spaces. Thanks so much, and keep it up.
5703.10.10 How to i convert word foramt (Any Fromulas??)
Thanks a lot. It helped me tons. Cheers!!!
THANKS FOR THE SOLUTION
FIND & REPLACE IS BEST WAY
Thanks for sharing the skills. It is really helpful
lovely..... May Allah accept this as a deed and give us guidance to the righteous path.
EXCELLENT
Yes
May Allah praise us
How to remove space after all the digits, as all above method tried but purpose not fulfilled.
all of my entries are like "4.83 (19.12)" and i want to delete the portion in percentages because i want to find the minimum value of the first number for a large number of cells. does anyone know how to do this? I have tried above methods with no luck
Thank you so much - the trim formula has saved me so much time :)
How do I remove the line separator in a bulk mobile leads? Example is below
206-200-0000
206-200-0001
2062000000
2062000001
Hello Jimmie!
Please use the following:
=SUBSTITUTE(A1, "-", "")
If Space is in the start
Like eg. Number in the cell start with space then what " 123456789"
Hello!
I’m sorry but your task is not entirely clear to me. Could you please describe it in more detail? What result do you want to get?
Removing spaces using find and replace option and substitute function can put up all the strings together.
Thank You Very Much
I had a strange situation with excel spaces. There was a range of cells with numbers in them. In all the cells there were several spaces before the numbers. Some cells had 27 paces before the number and others had more. I tried trim and it did not work. I also tried find and replace, but it did not work as find and replace can replace only a single space at a time, but here we had multiple spaces. So I copied the range of cells into a blank word document and did the find and replace to find all spaces and replace with with blanks. All the spaces were removed and I copied back the range of cells to excel, without any spaces of course. Hope this helps.
@ Charles
I had same issue with various number of spaces in each cell just after the core numbers data. The Word tip works well. Many thanks for sharing this.
FT-20-03-015557
FT-20-03-015568
FT-20-03-016249
FT-19-12-005014
FT-20-03-016227
FT-19-12-004990
FT-20-03-016236
I choosed the formula of "Replace all", but the result is showing that, excel can't do it in protected data, why ?
Hello Naseef!
I recommend reading this article on data protection in Excel on our blog.
Hey
How do you remove spaces from a cell that contains numerical data quickly when all of the cells have different amounts of spaces before them.
For example “ 550”, “ 300”, “ 6000000”
Hello!
I hope you have studied the recommendations in the above tutorial. Please specify what formula you used and what problem or error occurred.
Any idea how to remove a space after the number, for example 150.44__
The __ is where my space is
Thank you
Hello Lisa!
Which of the recommendations written in the article above did you use? What problems and errors occurred?
We have a tool that can solve your task in a couple of clicks: Ablebits Data - Remove Characters. This tool is available as a part of our Ultimate Suite for Excel that you can install in a trial mode and use for free: https://www.ablebits.com/files/get.php?addin=xl-suite&f=free-trial
Lookout for non breaking spaces!
It looks like a normal space but it is not.
Find and replace using a normal space character does not work!
One has to find #(00A0) and replace it!.
I have this information in one cell (column A)
VALLEJO - A52
I need to delete - A52 from column A and copy the A52 into column B.
So this is the final product
A52 (Column B) Vallejo (Column A)
Hello Jeanette!
How to split text into cells - read here.
We have a tool that can solve your task in a couple of clicks: Ablebits Data - Split text.
This tool is available as a part of our Ultimate Suite for Excel that you can install in a trial mode and use for free: https://www.ablebits.com/files/get.php?addin=xl-suite&f=free-trial
best solution i have found so far
=TRIM(CLEAN(SUBSTITUTE(B2,CHAR(160)," ")))
how to remove space like
A 25052
Hello!
I hope you have studied the recommendations in the above tutorial.
The formula below will do the trick for you to remove space:
=SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","",1)
How can I trim spaces from "selected cells" (not an entire column) - I have a spreadsheet where I only want to trim spaces from selected cells, within one column, but not all. Is there a way of selecting the cells, by using CTRL + select, etc., without removing spaces from non-selected cells?
Hello!
We have a tool that can solve your task in a couple of clicks.
The way you are talking about is possible if you use Ablebits Data - Trim Spaces.
This tool is available as a part of our Ultimate Suite for Excel that you can install in a trial mode and use for free: https://www.ablebits.com/files/get.php?addin=xl-suite&f=free-trial
Your way to remove spaces is not possible with standard Excel tools. If you are using the TRIM function that only works on one cell, then apply it only to the desired cells. If you use "Find and Replace", then with the button Find Next, skip individual cells.