I am not used to using Excel. But for a project I want only strings. I am trying to filter data but have many rows and replacing each word is time consuming. I want to remove words in brackets. For Eg: (programming language). In my excel words are in this format python(programming language). Similarly I have many such unique words in the brackets.
Please tell me how can I remove words starting with "(".
I am trying with Ctrl+H but I can only replace single word at a time.
Use the replace all box - you can select the sheet, a single row, single column or multiple rows & columns.
EDIT based on comment:
So, if you put an "*" between the brackets you will replace the whole word including the brackets. If you just put the opening bracket and replace with nothing then the word will be left with the closing bracket, to replace the closing bracket you will need to do it twice - one for the opening and once for cloasing...
this is the error I am getting.
I have 100's of rows of data, each row containing a list of multiple items separated by comma. for example:
a fox, a frog, a dog, candy,
tyler, daren, hogge, laura,
cat in the hat, remembering your favorite day, having a fun time
etc
as you can see, its not a simple "lastname, firstname" separation.
the issue im having is when i use text to columns, i can easily separate by comma, but im then left with a space before every second item in the list. I need to remove the space after each comma (but not EVERY space after each word!)
I cant just select "comma" and "space" in the delimiters option, because then it removes EVERY space between words (eg 'havingafuntime') when i only want to remove THE ONE space after the comma.
I know i can use "trim" - but im wondering if theres a way to remove the space WHILE SEPARATING THE TEXT TO COLUMNS, all in one swoop.
When working "normal" with excel you can simply left out any formulas for this case.
Instead of the =SUBSTITUTE(A1,", ",",") you can simply select the range you want to be corrected (like the whole A:A column) and press Ctrl+H (replace). Set "Find What" to ", " and "replace with" to "," (without the "). Hit replace all the to do it for the whole selection (non selected cells won't be replaced).
The build-in "Text to columns" can not be manipulated in a way to do it in one step.
EDIT:
Doing it as a one-click-macro just this 4 lines should do what you desire:
Sub text2cols()
Selection.Replace ", ", ","
Selection.TextToColumns Selection.Resize(1, 1), 1, , , , , True
End Sub
Just select the range you want to seperate and run the macro ;)
in the cell adjacent to the start of the column you are going to convert using text to columns, enter the following formula and copy down.
=substitute(A1,", ",",")
This will remove the space after every ,
Then copy and paste as value the resulting column.
Then perform your Text to Columns operation using , as you delimiter.
Another option would be to use Power Query.
Depending on your version of excel you should be able to download an install Power Query by googling "Download Power query for Excel 20X"
click in your data set
On Power query tab you will see "From Table" (in excel 2016 its already in data tab, you do not have to download it)
choose if your data has header or not
Go to Transform
Under Split column choose by delimiter
Choose comma
Under Format you will see Trim
Go to Home tab choose close and load
and you're done
I know this is an old post, but I found this doing a google search because I had the same problem as the OP. However, upon reading some of the suggestions it came to me that I can use the Find & Replace feature. I selected the column in question and did the following:
Find what: ", " (without quotes - used to show space)
Replace with: , (no space)
Essentially this made the list go from: a fox, a frog, a dog, candy, tyler, daren, hogge, laura, cat in the hat, remembering your favorite day, having a fun time
And changed it into this: a fox,a frog,a dog,candy,tyler,daren,hogge,laura,cat in the hat,remembering your favorite day,having a fun time
Then I just used the Text To Column function delimited by comma and it worked beautifully.
I hope this helps someone else out.
Excel Multiple Lines
In excel i have cells with multiple lines in them - like this
25 Eagle Street
Boondall
What i am trying to do is make them back into one line again as follows -
25 Eagle Street Boondall
Is there some sort of way i can do this in excel? I have over 40000 cells to sort that are multiple lines. I am using a c# i created to separate the suburbs from the addresses, but i cannot do this with these multiple lines because i will get incorrect results. Help would be greatly appreciated.
If these are line breaks entered by pressing Alt+Enter, you can replace them all with Excel's find/replace command. Select "Edit > Replace..." form the main menu or press the shortcut Ctrl+H and in the "Find what:" box you can enter the line-break code, which is character 10. To do this, press and hold the Alt key, and then enter the numbers 010 from the numeric keypad. You'll probably want to replace them with a space to maintain formatting.
I have read in many places that pressing "-" in command mode, places the cursor to the first non-blank character in the previouse line, but it doesn't work for me..
When I press enter it goes to the first non-blank character in the next line correctly, but "+" doesn't do the same job..
Any idea?
Maybe it is mapped to do something else by a system wide vim config file? What's the behavior with vim -u /dev/null -U /dev/null?
Pressing "-" without pressing and holding Shift caused my gVim's cursor to move to the first non-blank character of the previous line of a document I was editing. Likewise pressing and holding Shift and then pressing "+" caused the cursor to move forward to the beginning first non-blank position of the next line. I believe vim wants you to produce what the key's value, even if that requires pressing and holding Shift.
How do I remove leading or trailing spaces of all cells in an entire column?
The worksheet's conventional Find and Replace (aka Ctrl+H) dialog is not solving the problem.
Quite often the issue is a non-breaking space - CHAR(160) - especially from Web text sources -that CLEAN can't remove, so I would go a step further than this and try a formula like this which replaces any non-breaking spaces with a standard one
=TRIM(CLEAN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(160)," ")))
Ron de Bruin has an excellent post on tips for cleaning data here
You can also remove the CHAR(160) directly without a workaround formula by
Edit .... Replace your selected data,
in Find What hold ALT and type 0160 using the numeric keypad
Leave Replace With as blank and select Replace All
If you would like to use a formula, the TRIM function will do exactly what you're looking for:
+----+------------+---------------------+
| | A | B |
+----+------------+---------------------+
| 1 | =TRIM(B1) | value to trim here |
+----+------------+---------------------+
So to do the whole column...
1) Insert a column
2) Insert TRIM function pointed at cell you are trying to correct.
3) Copy formula down the page
4) Copy inserted column
5) Paste as "Values"
Should be good to go from there...
Without using a formula you can do this with 'Text to columns'.
Select the column that has the trailing spaces in the cells.
Click 'Text to columns' from the 'Data' tab, then choose option 'Fixed width'.
Set a break line so the longest text will fit. If your largest cell
has 100 characters you can set the breakline on 200 or whatever you
want.
Finish the operation.
You can now delete the new column Excel has created.
The 'side-effect' is that Excel has removed all trailing spaces in the original column.
If it's the same number of characters at the beginning of the cell each time, you can use the text to columns command and select the fixed width option to chop the cell data into two columns. Then just delete the unwanted stuff in the first column.
I've found that the best (and easiest) way to delete leading, trailing (and excessive) spaces in Excel is to use a third-party plugin. I've been using ASAP Utilities for Excel and it accomplishes the task as well as adds many other much-needed features. This approach doesn't require writing formulas and can remove spaces on any selection spanning multiple columns and/or rows. I also use this to sanitize and remove the uninvited non-breaking space that often finds its way into Excel data when copying-and-pasting from other Microsoft products.
More information regarding ASAP Utilities and trimming can be found here:
http://www.asap-utilities.com/asap-utilities-excel-tools-tip.php?tip=87
I was able to use Find & Replace with the "Find what:" input field set to:
" * "
(space asterisk space with no double-quotes)
and "Replace with:" set to:
""
(nothing)