Remove Spaces Between Characters and Numbers in Excel
This article teaches you how to remove unwanted spaces from cells in an Excel spreadsheet.
Contents
Steps
Using Find and Replace
- Highlight the range in which you want to remove all spaces. For example, if you want to remove spaces from C2 through C30, highlight those cells.
- Click the Edit menu.
- Select Find.
- Select Replace…. A dialog box will appear.
- Click the box beneath “Find What.”
- Press the space bar on the keyboard. Make sure to press it only once.
- Click Replace All. It’s the second button at the bottom of the window. The spaces are now removed from the selected cells. A pop-up will appear, letting you know how many spaces were removed.
- Click Click OK.
Using the Substitute Function
- Click the top cell in a blank column. The cell must be on the same row as the first line of data in the column with the spaces.
- For example, if you want to remove spaces from column C, and C’s first row of data is in row 2 (C2), click the second cell in your blank column (e.g. E2, F2, G2, etc).
- Type =Substitute.
- Click the first cell in the column with spaces. For example, if you want to remove all of the spaces from the C column, click the first box (e.g. C2) in the column that isn’t the title.
- If you clicked cell C2, the formula should now look like this: =Substitute(C2 .
- Type , (a comma). The cell should now look like this: =Substitute(C2,.
- Type " ",. There’s a space between the two sets of quotes—this is important.
- The formula should now look like this: =Substitute(C2," ",.
- Type ””). This time, there’s NO space between the sets of quotes.
- The formula should now look like this: =Substitute(C2,” “,””).
- Press ↵ Enter or ⏎ Return. You will now see the contents of the selected cell (C2, in this example) without spaces in the new column.
- For example, if C2 said w ww . wikih ow .com, your new cell will say www.wikihow.com.
- Click the cell with the formula you typed. The cell should now be highlighted.
- Drag the fill handle down over the cells you want to fill. The data from each corresponding cell will now appear in your new column without spaces.
- Copy the data from the new column to the original column. Your new space-free data is now in place.