The most reason is that your space is not a space, usually if you copy&paste some data from a web site you have an ASCII 160 in there.

Edit the cell, select the space, press CTRL+C, press ESC to exit the edit mode, press CTRL+H to open find & replace, press CTRL+V to paste "the space" into the find text field, click "Replace All".

Andreas.

Answer from Andreas Killer on learn.microsoft.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/excel › find and replace - how to include blank spaces before and after a word you want to replace
r/excel on Reddit: Find and replace - how to include blank spaces before and after a word you want to replace
October 10, 2023 -
  • I have a very long list of names, where the word "and" often appears between the two names. For example, "John and Mary."

  • I want to find every occurrence of the word "and" and replace it with " ^ " (Purpose is to use as delimiter for later splitting text to column, but that is another matter). In the example above, I would like the names to be shown as "John ^ Mary".

  • My problem: I can't figure out how to get Excel to include spaces in the text that I am seeking find and replace. In other words, I want Excel to look for (space)and(space). I have typed it into find like this: " and " << (without the quote marks, but typing a space before and after the word "and").

  • However, Excel ignores the spaces when it does the replacement, which messes up my list.

More info: Issue is, many of the names on my list contain the letters "and", and Excel is finding and replacing those text strings, even though they don't have a space before and after. Example: "John and Sandra" would be replaced with "John ^ S^ra" (instead of "John ^ Sandra). Or, "Andrew" would be replaced with "^rew"

If "find" in Excel also included the spaces you entered, then the problem would be solved, but Excel apparently can't find the spaces. (This is unlike Word, which definitely can find spaces.)

I have been searching for an solution for a long time, can anyone help?

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ExcelDemy
exceldemy.com › home › excel basics › how to find and replace space in excel: 5 methods
How to Find and Replace Space in Excel: 5 Methods - ExcelDemy
May 24, 2024 - See in the Salary Using SUBSTITUTE Function column that there are no spaces between the numbers of salary. ➤Select the entire dataset of the Salary column. ➤ Go to Home tab in the ribbon, and we have to select the Editing option. ... Find ...
Discussions

How to remove space in excel worksheet
Under Find What, I have left a ... leave no space and then press Replace All. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and window pop up. I did check the cell go with "General" and seems OK to use Find and Replace function. Can someone out there help me. Thanks in advance. Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For business ... More on learn.microsoft.com
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August 7, 2023
Remove extra spaces with Find & Replace but don't remove leading zeroes?
u/Super_Govedo - Your post was submitted successfully. Once your problem is solved, reply to the answer(s) saying Solution Verified to close the thread. Follow the submission rules -- particularly 1 and 2. To fix the body, click edit. To fix your title, delete and re-post. Include your Excel version and all other relevant information Failing to follow these steps may result in your post being removed without warning. I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns. More on reddit.com
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April 28, 2024
Find and Replace: Replacing a special character with a space
This seemed pretty straight forward, but.... Here's a segment where I have a special character on a copy/paste. I want to replace this and all occurrences of the special character with a single space. I've tried the 1) copy/paste of the special… More on learn.microsoft.com
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September 17, 2023
replace - Excel formula to remove comma, spaces, period and add a text - Stack Overflow
Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most. Learn more about Collectives ... Bring the best of human thought and AI automation together at your work. Explore Stack Internal ... Save this question. Show activity on this post. ... Reyes, Ma. Luisa Jun-Oh, Junee Carter, John Jr. I need to use a combination of excel formulas in one cell to remove commas, periods, spaces and replace with ... More on stackoverflow.com
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Ablebits
ablebits.com › ablebits blog › excel › excel formulas › 3 ways to remove spaces between words / numbers in excel cells
3 ways to remove spaces between words / numbers in Excel cells
Press the Space bar twice in the Find What field and once in Replace With · Click on the "Replace all" button, and then press Ok to close Excel confirmation dialog.
Published: April 21, 2016
Views: 76K
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YouTube
youtube.com › find easy solution
How to remove Spaces using Find and Replace in Excel - Office 365 - YouTube
You can remove extra spaces from text in Excel using Find and Replace. You can remove leading and trailing spaces also but only can trim to 1 space and can't...
Published: January 8, 2021
Views: 95K
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The Bricks
thebricks.com › home › resources › how to replace space in excel
How to Replace Space in Excel
February 20, 2025 - Press Ctrl + H (on Windows) or Command + H (on Mac) to open the Find and Replace dialog box. You can also find it on the Home tab, under Find & Select. In the "Find what:" box, press the spacebar once. Leave the "Replace with:" box completely empty.
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Avantix Learning
avantixlearning.ca › home › how to replace spaces in excel with underscores (_), dashes (-) or other values
How to Replace Spaces in Excel with Underscores (_), Dashes (-) or Other Values
April 13, 2022 - You can also click the Home tab in the Ribbon and select Replace in the Find & Select group. In the Find what box, type a space.
Find elsewhere
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YouTube
youtube.com › excelhow tech
How to Find and Replace Line Breaks with Space in Excel - YouTube
You can read more about it here: You can read more about it here: https://www.excelhow.net/find-and-replace-alt-enter-line-breaks-with-space.htmlThis Excel v...
Published: January 17, 2024
Views: 654
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ExcelTips (ribbon)
excelribbon.tips.net › T012488_Using_a_Formula_to_Replace_Spaces_with_Dashes.html
Using a Formula to Replace Spaces with Dashes (Microsoft Excel)
December 3, 2022 - If you need a formula to change spaces to some other character, the SUBSTITUTE function fits the bill. Here's how to use it.
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Excel Campus
excelcampus.com › home › tutorials (blog) › 5 ways to find and remove blank spaces in excel
5 Ways to Find and Remove Blank Spaces in Excel - Excel Campus
January 24, 2026 - If you are relatively new to Power Query, or could use a refresher, I recommend checking out my free webinar: The Modern Excel Blueprint. Let's look at the same example we used for the TRIM function, but this time we will use a macro to trim extra spaces from text. Start by opening the VB Editor. Go to the Developer tab and select the Visual Basic Button. The keyboard shortcut is Alt + F11. I've written a simple macro that loops through each cell and replaces the value of the cell with the trimmed value. If you'd like to copy this macro, you can find it in the download file at the top of this post.
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ExtendOffice
extendoffice.com › home › office tips › excel tips
How to replace blank space with nothing/underscore/dash/comma in Excel?
August 29, 2024 - 1. Open all workbooks you will ... pane. See screenshot: 2. In the Advanced Find and Replace pane, go to the Replace tab, and: (1) In the Find what box, please type a space; (2) In the Replace with box, type underscore/dash/comma as you need....
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/excel › remove extra spaces with find & replace but don't remove leading zeroes?
r/excel on Reddit: Remove extra spaces with Find & Replace but don't remove leading zeroes?
April 28, 2024 -

I have data I want to copy from one excel doc to another. Since I'm using index match I must keep all 6 digits including zeroes (example: 000016).

The problem is that whenever new data is generated from the business software I use the exporterd data has 6 digits values with extra space in each cell... Removing spaces is easy with Find & Replace by replacing space with nothing. Problem is that this removes leading zeroes as well?

I want to remove extra space and keep leading zeroes in each cell.

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DataCamp
datacamp.com › tutorial › how-to-remove-spaces-in-excel
How to Remove Spaces in Excel: 5 Good Methods | DataCamp
March 4, 2026 - In the Replace with field, enter a single space. Click Replace All. Cleaning spaces using the Find & Replace feature. Image by Author. Repeat the steps until Excel shows the message, We couldn't find anything to replace. Note that this method reduces leading and trailing spaces to a single space but does not remove them completely.
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How To Excel
howtoexcel.org › remove-unwanted-space-characters
4 Ways to Remove Unwanted Space Characters | How To Excel
Both will open the Find & Replace menu and we can press the Options button for more advance find and replace options. In the Find what section, we need to add two space characters. We can press the Space bar twice on the keyboard. In the Replace with section, we need to add a single space character.
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Statology
statology.org › home › how to replace space with underscore in excel
How to Replace Space with Underscore in Excel
August 17, 2023 - Then type a single space in the Find what box and type a single underscore in the Replace with box. Once you click Replace All, the spaces in each cell will be replaced with underscores and a message box will appear that tells you how many ...
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The Bricks
thebricks.com › home › resources › how to replace spaces with underscores in excel
How to Replace Spaces with Underscores in Excel - Bricks
February 12, 2025 - It's usually safer to select the specific data you intend to change. Open Find and Replace: You can open this tool in two ways: Go to the Home tab on the Excel ribbon, click Find & Select in the 'Editing' group, and then choose Replace....
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Contextures
contextures.com › data › find › line breaks
How to Add or Remove Line Breaks in Excel
February 16, 2026 - In the Find and Replace dialog box, on the Replace tab, click in the Replace With box · Next, type a space character, or any character you want to use · Tip: You can leave the box blank, to replace the line break with nothing · Finally, click ...