We can see the hex value “20” at the end of Row3 and Row7. Row3 and Row7 look to have a “hidden” character at the end. This is what I read from your Excel file:Īnd to check if there are any hidden characters, I do a quick join of “XXX” before and after the values in result, and I get: I think that’s probably because Excel converts them. This may be faster, depending how much data you're dealing with.Hi, just to demonstrate what I was explaining.įirst, though, your Excel file does not really contains “hidden” characters. Pasting text into Notepad and then copying it into excel removes the extra codes, as Notepad's a plain text editor. If there's no xxx, it means that unicode character wasn't found. Personally I like to do: =SUBSTITUTE(A1, char(160),'xxx') as a test, as it shows me where in the string it found that character.

If the unicode is not covered by CLEAN, you can use SUBSTITUTE to replace that exact unicode number with nothing: =SUBSTITUTE(A1, char(160),'') The CLEAN function removes only characters #0 - 31. Changing the first '1' to '2' will show the second characters code, etc. This formula gives the first characters value. Use a formula like =UNICODE(MID(A4,1,1)) to identify each characters exact unicode value. This is useful to confirm if there are unseen characters present, or not. (I purposely inserted the � characters in this post.) Thanks in advance for the assistance.Ī function like =Len(A4) will show the number of characters INCLUDING any hidden characters. csv) file into another application as UTF-8 file encoding. I see these characters when importing the excel (as a. If I save the file as a UTF-8 csv in excel it removes the carriage returns I purposely put in the text. I need the formatting to stay as it is but just remove the hidden � character.

I have a file with hundreds of lines of text and was hoping there was a formula that could be used. I also tried a substitute formula but wasn’t successful. The hidden Unicode characters � are at various different points in each cell so no trim function can be used.Īn example of text in a cell is like the following: I tried the clean function it that removed line spacing I need in the cell. I am seeing Unicode U+FFFD � (displays as black diamond with white question mark inside) in some of my cells. Been trying to figure out how to remove hidden Unicode text from cells in excel 365 using a formula without removing all formatting of the cell.

Finding hidden characters in excel