TRIM
Trim removes extra spaces from text, leaving only single spaces between words. It is useful when dealing with text data that may contain leading, trailing, or extra spaces that are not needed.
Syntax 🔗
=TRIM(text)
text | The text or cell reference containing the text that you want to trim. |
About TRIM 🔗
When working with text in Excel, the TRIM function proves to be a handy tool for tidying up your data. It excels in eliminating unnecessary spaces within a text string, ensuring that your content appears neat and well-formatted. TRIM is particularly valuable when dealing with imported data, user inputs, or text manipulation tasks where extraneous spaces might cause issues or distort the presentation of information. By utilizing TRIM, you can swiftly normalize the spacing in your text, enhancing readability and facilitating further analysis or processing steps.
Examples 🔗
If cell A1 contains ' Excel is awesome! ', using the formula =TRIM(A1) will result in 'Excel is awesome!' with all extra spaces removed.
Notes 🔗
The TRIM function only removes spaces, including non-breaking spaces (character code 160), at the beginning and end of a text string. It does not remove spaces between words within the string. Keep in mind that TRIM also cannot handle non-printable characters or other special spacing characters within the text.
Questions 🔗
While the TRIM function removes extra spaces from text, leaving only single spaces between words, the CLEAN function is typically used to remove non-printable characters from text. CLEAN eliminates characters with ASCII values 0-31, which includes non-printable characters like line breaks and tab spaces.
Can I use the TRIM function to remove all spaces within a text string?No, the TRIM function is designed to remove leading and trailing spaces in a text string, not spaces within the string. To remove all spaces, you can combine the TRIM function with the SUBSTITUTE function or other text manipulation functions, depending on your specific requirements.
Does the TRIM function modify the original text or create a new trimmed text?The TRIM function does not modify the original text in the cell; it returns the trimmed text as the result of the function. If you want to permanently remove extra spaces from a cell, you can paste the trimmed values back over the original data.