Remove extra spaces from Excel in one go
Tables exported from other systems or copied from the web often hide invisible spaces: one trailing space and VLOOKUP stops matching; one zero-width character and the filter shows the same name twice. Drop the file, tick what to clean — leading/trailing spaces, repeated spaces, zero-width and non-breaking spaces, completely empty rows — and get a clean table, with a count of cells changed and rows removed. Line breaks inside a cell (Alt+Enter) are kept.
Runs in your browser · no upload · no sign-up
How to use it
- 1 Drop an Excel or CSV file, or paste a table
- 2 Tick what to clean
- 3 Download the clean Excel or CSV
What it does
- Trim leading and trailing spaces in every cell
- Collapse runs of spaces into one
- Remove zero-width and non-breaking spaces you cannot see
- Delete rows that are completely empty
What it doesn’t do
- Single spaces between words are kept
- Number formats, date formats and formulas are not kept — the export holds cleaned values
- Empty columns are not removed
FAQ
Why does VLOOKUP fail on identical-looking values?
Most often a trailing space, a zero-width character or a non-breaking space is hiding in one of the cells. You cannot see them, but they make the values unequal. Clean the table here and look up again.
How is this different from Excel’s TRIM?
TRIM needs a helper column and a paste-back, and it ignores non-breaking and zero-width characters. Here the whole table is cleaned at once, invisible characters included.
Are line breaks inside cells removed?
No. Collapsing only touches horizontal spaces; Alt+Enter line breaks stay.
What about full-width spaces?
Full-width spaces at the start or end are trimmed; runs of them in the middle are collapsed when “Collapse repeated spaces” is on.
Will my original file be changed?
No — the original is only read; you download a new file.
Is the file uploaded?
No. Reading, cleaning and writing all happen in your browser.