The CLEAN function removes most common nonprinting characters (Unicode character codes 0–31) from text.
CLEAN(text)
text: Any value from which you want to remove nonprinting characters.
Notes
This function can be helpful if text you paste from another application contains unwanted question marks, spaces, boxes, or other unexpected characters.
There are some less common nonprinting characters that are not removed by CLEAN (character codes 127, 129, 141, 143, 144, and 157). To remove these, you can use the SUBSTITUTE function to replace them with a code in the range 0–31 before you use the CLEAN function.
You can use the TRIM function to remove extra spaces in text.
Example |
|---|
Suppose you copy what you believe to be the text “a b c d e f” from another application and paste it into cell A1, but instead see “a b c ? ?d e f”. You can try using CLEAN to remove the unexpected characters: =CLEAN(A1) returns “a b c d e f”. |