Easy Ways to Find and Remove Blank Spaces in Excel

Finding blank spaces in an Excel spreadsheet can be useful for several reasons.

Here are a few:

  1. Data cleaning: If you have a large dataset, finding blank cells can help you ensure that your data is complete and accurate. You can then fill in the blanks with appropriate values or remove them altogether.
  2. Data analysis: Blank cells can affect the accuracy of formulas and calculations in your spreadsheet. Finding these blank cells can help you fix any errors and ensure that your analysis is accurate.
  3. Formatting: Blank cells can make your spreadsheet look cluttered and unprofessional. Finding these blank cells can help you format your spreadsheet more effectively and improve its appearance.
  4. Data entry: If you use Excel to enter data, finding blank cells can help you identify where data is missing and prompt you to enter it.

Overall, finding blank spaces in Excel can help you clean up your data, improve accuracy, and make your spreadsheet easier to work with.

Using Find & Replace to remove extra spaces between words

To remove extra spaces between words using find and replace, follow these steps:

  1. Open the document or text file in which you want to remove extra spaces.
  2. Press “Ctrl+H” or go to “Edit” > “Find and Replace” in your menu bar.
  3. In the “Find what” field, type two or more spaces (press spacebar twice or more).
  4. In the “Replace with” field, type a single space.
  5. Click “Replace All” to remove all instances of extra spaces between words from your document.

Note: Make sure that you’re not removing spaces that are intentional, such as those used for indentation or formatting.

Remove all spaces between numbers Using Find & Replace

To remove all spaces between numbers using find and replace, follow these steps:

  1. Open the document or text file in which you want to remove spaces between numbers.
  2. Press “Ctrl+H” or go to “Edit” > “Find and Replace” in your menu bar.
  3. In the “Find what” field, type a space followed by a number followed by another space (e.g., ” 1 “).
  4. In the “Replace with” field, type the same number without any spaces (e.g., “1”).
  5. Click “Replace All” to remove all instances of spaces between numbers from your document.

Note: Be careful when removing spaces between numbers, as some numbers may be part of larger strings of text that should not be modified. It’s a good idea to review your changes carefully after using Find & Replace to ensure that you haven’t inadvertently modified anything you didn’t mean to.

Remove leading/trailing/extra/all spaces from string

You can remove leading, trailing, extra, or all spaces from an Excel string using different functions. Here are some examples:

  1. To remove leading spaces: use the TRIM function.

The TRIM function removes all leading and trailing spaces from a string. Here’s an example formula that removes leading spaces from cell A1:

=TRIM(A1)

This formula returns the text in A1 with all leading spaces removed.

  1. To remove trailing spaces: use the TRIM function.

The TRIM function also removes all trailing spaces from a string. Here’s an example formula that removes trailing spaces from cell A1:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",REPT(" ",LEN(A1))),LEN(A1)))

This formula first replaces all spaces in the text with an equal number of space characters using the SUBSTITUTE function, then uses the RIGHT function to return the rightmost characters of the resulting text (i.e., the characters after all trailing spaces have been replaced with space characters), and finally uses the TRIM function to remove any remaining leading or trailing spaces.

  1. To remove extra spaces: use the SUBSTITUTE function.

The SUBSTITUTE function can be used to replace multiple spaces with a single space. Here’s an example formula that removes extra spaces from cell A1:

=TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(160)," "), "  ", " "))

This formula first replaces non-breaking spaces (code 160) with regular spaces using the SUBSTITUTE function, then replaces two or more consecutive spaces with a single space, and finally uses the TRIM function to remove any remaining leading or trailing spaces.

  1. To remove all spaces: use the SUBSTITUTE function.

The SUBSTITUTE function can also be used to remove all spaces from a string. Here’s an example formula that removes all spaces from cell A1:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")

This formula uses the SUBSTITUTE function to replace all spaces in A1 with an empty string (i.e., nothing), effectively removing all spaces from the text.

Using formula to remove all spaces

To remove all spaces in a cell using a formula, you can use the SUBSTITUTE function in combination with the TRIM function.

The SUBSTITUTE function replaces one text string with another, and the TRIM function removes all leading and trailing spaces from a text string. Here’s an example formula that removes all spaces from cell A1:

=SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(A1), ” “, “”)

This formula first uses the TRIM function to remove any extra spaces from the beginning and end of the text string in cell A1. Then the SUBSTITUTE function replaces each remaining space with an empty string (i.e., nothing). The result is a text string with no spaces.

Note that this formula will only work for removing spaces in a single cell. If you need to remove spaces from multiple cells, you can simply copy the formula down to the other cells.

Extract space from right in Excel cell

To extract the space from the right side of a text string in an Excel cell, you can use the RIGHT function, along with the LEN and TRIM functions.

Here’s an example formula that extracts the space from the right side of cell A1:

=IF(RIGHT(TRIM(A1),1)=” “,LEFT(TRIM(A1),LEN(TRIM(A1))-1),TRIM(A1))

This formula first uses the TRIM function to remove any extra spaces from the beginning and end of the text string in cell A1.

Then it uses the RIGHT function to extract the last character from the text string, which should be a space if there is one.

If the last character is a space, the formula uses the LEFT function to return all but the last character of the trimmed text string (i.e., without the space). If there is no space at the end of the text string, the formula simply returns the trimmed text string.

Note that this formula assumes there is only one space at the end of the text string. If there are multiple spaces, or if there are spaces elsewhere in the text string that you don’t want to remove, you’ll need to modify the formula accordingly.

Fix the extra space/s at the end of cells

To fix extra spaces at the end of cells in Excel, you can use the TRIM function. The TRIM function removes all leading and trailing spaces from a text string. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Select the cells that contain the extra spaces.
  2. Click on the “Home” tab in the Excel ribbon.
  3. In the “Editing” group, click on the “Find & Select” dropdown arrow and select “Replace“.
  4. In the “Find what” field, press the spacebar once or more times to insert a space.
  5. Leave the “Replace with” field blank.
  6. Click on “Replace All“.
  7. Now, apply the TRIM function to the cells to remove any remaining spaces. To do this, enter “=TRIM(cell)” into an adjacent cell (replacing “cell” with the reference to the cell you want to fix), and then copy and paste the formula down to the other cells as needed.

This should remove all extra spaces at the end of the cells. Note that if there are spaces within the text of the cell that you want to keep, this method will also remove them.

Finding the cell that contains just a space in Excel

To find the cell that contains just a space in Excel, you can use the Find and Replace function. Follow these steps:

  1. Press “Ctrl + F” or go to “Home” > “Find & Select” > “Find” in your menu bar.
  2. In the “Find what” field, type a single space character by pressing the spacebar once.
  3. Leave the “Replace with” field blank.
  4. Click on “Find All” to search for all instances of cells containing a single space character.
  5. The search results will be displayed in a separate window. Double-click on any of the results to highlight and select the cell.

Note that if there are multiple cells containing a single space character, you will need to repeat step 5 for each one to select them individually.

Additionally, this method will not find cells that contain multiple spaces or other non-printable characters, only cells containing a single space character.

How to find position of 1th space in Excel string?

Assuming you want to find the position of the first space in a given cell in an Excel sheet, you can use the FIND function.

The syntax for the FIND function is as follows:

FIND(find_text, within_text, [start_num])

Here’s an example formula that finds the position of the first space in cell A1:

=FIND(" ",A1,1)

In this formula, ” ” is the text we’re looking for (i.e., the space character), A1 is the cell containing the text we want to search within, and 1 is the starting position (i.e., we want to start searching from the first character in the string).

This formula returns the position of the first space in the text, counting from the beginning of the text. If there is no space in the text, the formula returns the #VALUE! error.

How to find position of 2th space in Excel string?

To find the position of the second space in an Excel string, you can use a combination of the FIND and SUBSTITUTE functions.

First, you can use the SUBSTITUTE function to replace the first space in the text with another character that is not likely to occur in the text (e.g., “#”). Here’s an example formula:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",1)

In this formula, A1 is the cell containing the text we want to search within, ” ” is the space character we want to replace, “#” is the replacement character, and 1 specifies that only the first occurrence of the space should be replaced.

Next, you can use the FIND function to locate the position of the second space in the modified text. Here’s an example formula:

=FIND(" ",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",1),FIND(" ",A1)+1)

In this formula, the innermost FIND function (i.e., FIND(” “,A1)+1) returns the position of the first space in the original text, plus one. This is the starting position for the outer FIND function, which searches for the second space in the modified text (i.e., the one that was replaced with “#”).

The FIND function returns the position of the second space in the modified text, which corresponds to the position of the second space in the original text.

How to find position of 3th space in Excel string?

To find the position of the third space (or any nth space) in an Excel string, you can modify the formula I provided earlier that finds the position of the second space.

Here’s an example formula that finds the position of the third space:

=FIND(" ",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",2),FIND(" ",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",1))+1)

In this formula, the SUBSTITUTE function replaces the first two occurrences of the space character with “#” characters.

The FIND function then looks for the third space character in the modified text, starting from the position immediately following the position of the second “#” character.

You can modify this formula to find the position of any nth space by adjusting the number 2 in the SUBSTITUTE function and the number 1 in the second FIND function to the appropriate values.

For example, to find the position of the fourth space, you would use the value 3 in the SUBSTITUTE function and the value 2 in the second FIND function.

How to find position of 4th space in Excel string?

To find the position of the fourth space (or any nth space) in an Excel string, you can modify the formula I provided earlier that finds the position of the third space.

Here’s an example formula that finds the position of the fourth space:

=FIND(" ",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",3),FIND(" ",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","#",2))+1)

In this formula, the SUBSTITUTE function replaces the first three occurrences of the space character with “#” characters.

The FIND function then looks for the fourth space character in the modified text, starting from the position immediately following the position of the third “#” character.

You can modify this formula to find the position of any nth space by adjusting the number 3 in the SUBSTITUTE function and the number 2 in the second FIND function to the appropriate values.

For example, to find the position of the fifth space, you would use the value 4 in the SUBSTITUTE function and the value 3 in the second FIND function.

How to find position of nth space in Excel string?

To find the position of the nth space in an Excel string, you can use a combination of the FIND and SUBSTITUTE functions. Here’s a formula that finds the position of the nth space:

=FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",CHAR(1),n))-1

In this formula, A1 is the cell containing the text we want to search within, ” ” is the space character we want to replace, CHAR(1) is a substitute character that is not likely to occur in the text, and n is the number of the space we want to find (e.g., 3 for the third space).

The SUBSTITUTE function replaces the nth occurrence of the space character with CHAR(1). The FIND function then locates the position of CHAR(1) in the modified text, which corresponds to the position of the nth space in the original text.

Finally, we subtract 1 from the result to get the actual position of the nth space (since the FIND function returns the position of the first character of CHAR(1) in the text).

Note that if the text doesn’t contain n spaces, the formula will return an error. To avoid this, you can wrap the formula in the IFERROR function, like this:

=IFERROR(FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",CHAR(1),n))-1,"Space not found")

This formula will return the message “Space not found” if the text doesn’t contain n spaces.

Find and Remove Blank Spaces in Excel with power query

To find and remove blank spaces in Excel with Power Query, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Excel workbook that contains the data you want to clean.
  2. Select the range of cells that you want to work with.
  3. Click on the “Data” tab in the ribbon and select “From Table/Range” from the “Get & Transform Data” section.
  4. This will open the Power Query Editor window. In the editor, click on the column header of the column you want to clean.
  5. Click on the “Transform” tab in the ribbon and select “Replace Values” from the “Text Column” section.
  6. In the “Replace Values” dialog box, enter a single space character in the “Value To Find” field and leave the “Replace With” field empty.
  7. Click “OK” to close the dialog box. This will replace all single spaces with blank values in the selected column.
  8. Next, we will remove the blank values from the column. Click on the “Transform” tab in the ribbon and select “Remove Rows” from the “Any Column” section.
  9. In the “Remove Rows” dialog box, select “Blank” and click “OK”. This will remove all rows that contain blank values in the selected column.
  10. Finally, click on the “Close & Load” button in the ribbon to apply the changes and load the cleaned data back into Excel.

These steps should help you find and remove blank spaces in Excel using Power Query.

Find and Remove Blank Spaces in Excel with vba and macro

To find and remove blank spaces in Excel with VBA and macro, you can use the following code:

Sub RemoveBlanks()
    Dim ws As Worksheet
    Dim rng As Range
    Dim cell As Range
    
    Set ws = ActiveSheet ' Change this to the sheet you want to work with
    Set rng = ws.UsedRange ' Change this to the range you want to work with
    
    For Each cell In rng
        If Len(Trim(cell.Value)) = 0 Then
            cell.ClearContents
        End If
    Next cell
End Sub

Here’s how you can use this code:

  1. Open the Excel workbook that contains the data you want to clean.
  2. Press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor.
  3. In the editor, click on “Insert” in the menu bar and select “Module” from the drop-down list.
  4. Copy and paste the above code into the module.
  5. Save the module and close the editor.
  6. Return to your worksheet.
  7. Press Alt + F8 to open the Macro dialog box.
  8. Select the “RemoveBlanks” macro from the list and click “Run”.

This will run the macro and remove any blank spaces in the selected range. The macro checks each cell in the range for blank spaces and clears the contents of the cell if it finds any.

Note: This macro removes all blank spaces in the selected range. If you only want to remove leading or trailing spaces, you’ll need to modify the code accordingly.

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