5 Ways to Clean Special Characters from Excel Cells

Working with data in Microsoft Excel often involves managing characters that can complicate your analysis or reporting. Special characters, such as symbols, emojis, or non-printable characters, can disrupt sorting, filtering, and general data manipulation. Here are five methods you can use to clean these characters from your Excel cells, ensuring your datasets remain clean and usable:

1. Using Text to Columns

The Text to Columns feature in Excel is primarily designed for splitting text into different columns, but it can also help remove special characters.

1. Select the column containing the data you want to clean.
2. Go to Data > Text to Columns.
3. Choose Delimited and click Next.
4. Check the boxes for any delimiters you know are in your text, such as Space, Comma, or Tab. For special characters, you might try Other, and enter the character you want to remove. Then click Next.
5. Set the Destination back to the original column, overwriting the original data.
6. Click Finish.

⚠️ Note: This method can inadvertently split text if there are other delimiters in the cell. It's best to use this for data where you're only expecting to remove one specific character.

2. Find and Replace with Wildcards

Find and Replace can be used in conjunction with wildcards to remove a wide range of characters:

1. Press Ctrl+H to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. In the Find what box, enter *~*. This means find any special character.
   • The asterisk (*) matches any sequence of characters.
   • The tilde (~) indicates that the character following is a wildcard itself, in this case, representing any special character.
3. Leave the Replace with box blank.
4. Click Replace All.

This method can remove any non-standard character, which might not be desirable if you want to retain some special characters.

3. Excel Formulas to Clean Data

Using formulas to remove special characters can offer more control over what you want to keep or remove:

Using CLEAN and TRIM

Formula: =TRIM(CLEAN(A1))

• CLEAN removes non-printable characters.
• TRIM removes extra spaces and trims leading or trailing spaces.

Using SUBSTITUTE

For specific characters:

• =SUBSTITUTE(A1,“.”,“”) would remove all periods from cell A1.

These formulas can be applied to single cells or an entire range by using absolute cell references or by dragging the formula across the range.

4. VBA Macro for Detailed Control

For advanced users or for complex datasets, using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can provide granular control:

Sub RemoveSpecialCharacters() Dim cell As Range For Each cell In Selection If Not IsEmpty(cell) Then cell.Value = WorksheetFunction.Substitute(cell.Value, Chr(10), “”) ‘ Remove line feed cell.Value = WorksheetFunction.Substitute(cell.Value, Chr(13), “”) ’ Remove carriage return ‘ Add more lines for different characters or use a loop with Chr() to check for specific ASCII values End If Next cell End Sub

To use this macro, press Alt+F11 to open the VBA editor, insert a new module, and paste the code. Then run the macro by selecting your data range and calling the macro from the Excel interface or directly from VBA.

🔧 Note: VBA macros require a basic understanding of programming and can be potentially dangerous if improperly written. Always review and understand VBA code before running.

5. External Tools or Add-ins

Sometimes, Excel's built-in functionalities might not suffice, especially when dealing with large datasets or complex cleaning operations. Consider:

• Power Query: For advanced data transformation, part of Excel's Power BI tools.
• Data Cleaning Tools: Like OpenRefine or Excel add-ins such as Ablebits Ultimate Suite or ASAP Utilities.

These tools often provide robust, scriptable methods to clean data, manage multiple special character removals, and even automate repetitive tasks.

Recapitulation

We've explored five different methods to cleanse your Excel cells from unwanted special characters. Each approach has its own merits:

• Text to Columns can be quick but has limitations.
• Find and Replace with wildcards is handy for general character removal but might be too aggressive.
• Excel formulas offer control and are flexible.
• VBA provides detailed control but requires programming knowledge.
• External tools and add-ins give you advanced data cleaning capabilities.

Choose the method that best fits the scope of your data cleanup project, your familiarity with Excel, and your time constraints. Remember, cleaning data is an essential part of data preparation, and ensuring your data is free of special characters can significantly enhance your analysis accuracy and efficiency.

Can I undo special character removal in Excel?

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Yes, you can undo most recent actions in Excel by using Ctrl+Z, but this depends on whether the data has been saved or not. For irreversible changes, maintaining an original backup of your data is advisable before performing large-scale edits.

What if I only want to remove certain special characters?

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Using Excel formulas or a custom VBA macro will give you the flexibility to target specific characters for removal. Look for the SUBSTITUTE function or extend the VBA macro example given to include only the characters you want to remove.

Are there ways to clean special characters that aren’t listed here?

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Yes, there are several other methods, including third-party software, regular expressions in more advanced text editors, or even custom scripts in Python or R if you’re working with programming environments. Explore what suits your needs and skill level best.