Do pesky extra spaces ever get in your way in Excel? They do for me – especially when I export from other programs.

Let’s say you have a column of First and Last Names, but instead of displaying “Bob Jones”, they are displaying “   Bob   Jones   “.

Let’s remove those spaces with a simple function called “Trim”. In the adjacent cell, enter “=trim(A1)”. (Of course, “A1” in this example is whatever cell your data is in).

And that’s it! The function takes out all the extra spaces.

Bonus: This works with number fields, too!

If you are an Advocate Capital customer and need help preparing or manipulating data in the Excel application, feel free to contact me at [email protected].

We love feedback from our customers and implement suggestions often.  What shortcut do you use the most? If you have a question or idea for an Excel tip that you would like to see, let me know and I might write about it!

Billie Hardison

Training Specialist

Photo Credit: Stokkete