Clean spreadsheet data
Upload your file and download it with clean text: no extra spaces, no invisible characters and consistent letter case.
The problem with "dirty" data
Two values that look identical and never match. A VLOOKUP returning #N/A for no
apparent reason. A pivot table showing "Madrid" three times as if they were three
different cities.
It is nearly always the same thing: a trailing space, a double space in the middle, or an invisible character that slipped in when copying from a web page or a PDF.
The characters you cannot see
These are the worst because looking at them tells you nothing. The most common:
- Non-breaking space (
U+00A0): what copying from a web page produces. It looks like a space and is not one. - Zero-width space (
U+200B): it does not even take up room. - Text direction marks: they appear when copying from documents containing Arabic or Hebrew, even if the text itself is Latin.
The "remove invisible characters" option replaces them with normal spaces or deletes them. It is the only way for two visually identical values to be identical to a computer too.
Letter case
Beyond cleaning, you can unify the case: all lower, all upper, Each Word Capitalised, or first letter only. Useful for names and cities arriving from different sources.
Numbers and dates are never touched: converting them to text to clean them would break them.
Frequently asked questions
Does it affect numeric columns?
No. Only text cells are cleaned. An amount or a date is left exactly as it is.
Can I clean only some columns?
Yes, list them separated by commas. Empty means the whole sheet.
How is this different from Excel's TRIM function?
TRIM strips extra spaces but does not touch invisible characters or normalise case, and you have to apply it cell by cell with a helper column.
Can it be undone?
Your original file is never modified: what you download is a new file.