TRIM - Excel - Microsoft Office Online

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TRIM

Applies to: Microsoft Office Excel 2003

Removes all spaces from text except for single spaces between words. Use TRIM on text that you have received from another application that may have irregular spacing.

Important The TRIM function was designed to trim the 7-bit ASCII space character (value 32) from text. In the Unicode character set, there is an additional space character called the nonbreaking space character that has a decimal value of 160. This character is commonly used in Web pages as the HTML entity,  . By itself, the TRIM function does not remove this nonbreaking space character. For an example of how to trim both space characters from text, see Remove spaces and non-printing characters from text.

Syntax

TRIM(text)

Text is the text from which you want spaces removed.

Example

The example may be easier to understand if you copy it to a blank worksheet.

Show How to copy an example

Create a blank workbook or worksheet.
Select the example in the Help topic.
Note Do not select the row or column headers.

Selecting an example from Help
Press CTRL+C.
In the worksheet, select cell A1, and press CTRL+V.
To switch between viewing the results and viewing the formulas that return the results, press CTRL+` (grave accent), or on the Tools menu, point to Formula Auditing, and then click Formula Auditing Mode.

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A	B
Formula	Description (Result)
=TRIM(" First Quarter Earnings ")	Removes leading and trailing spaces from the text in the formula (First Quarter Earnings)