TRIM Function

Removes extra spaces in the data

What is the TRIM Function?

The TRIM Function[1] is categorized under Excel Text functions. TRIM helps remove the extra spaces in data and thus clean up the cells in the worksheet.

In financial analysis, the TRIM function can be useful in removing irregular spacing from data imported from other applications.

 

Formula

=TRIM(text)

 

  1. Text (required argument) – This is the text from which we wish to remove spaces.

 

A few notes about the TRIM Function:

  • TRIM will remove extra spaces from text. Thus, it will leave only single spaces between words and no space characters at the start or end of the text.
  • It is very useful when cleaning up text from other applications or environments.
  • TRIM only removes the ASCII space character (32) from the text.
  • The Unicode text often contains a non-breaking space character (160) that appears in web pages as an HTML entity. It will not be removed with TRIM.

 

How to use the TRIM Function in Excel?

TRIM is a built-in function that can be used as a worksheet function in Excel. To understand the uses of the function, let’s consider a few examples:

 

Example 1

Suppose we are given the following data from an external source:

 

TRIM Function - Sample Data

 

For trimming the spaces, we will use the following function:

 

TRIM Function - Example 1

 

We get the results below:

 

TRIM Function - Example 1a

 

Example 2

Let us see how the TRIM function works for numbers. Suppose we are the given the data below:

 

TRIM Function - Example 2

 

The formula to use is:

 

TRIM Function - Example 2a

 

Using the TRIM function, we will get the following result:

 

TRIM Function - Example 2b

 

As you can see above, the trimmed values are text strings, while we want numbers. To fix this, we will use the VALUE function along with the TRIM function, instead of the above formula:

 

TRIM Function - Example 2c

 

The above formula removes all leading and trailing spaces, if any, and turns the resulting value into a number, as shown below:

 

TRIM Function - Example 2d

 

Example 3

To join multiple cell values with a comma, we can use a formula based on the SUBSTITUTE and TRIM functions. Suppose we are given the following data:

 

TRIM Function - Example 3

 

The formula to use is:

 

TRIM Function - Example 3b

 

The formula first joins the values in the four cells to the left using the concatenation operator (&) and a single space between each value. The TRIM function is used to “normalize” all spacing. TRIM automatically strips space at the start and end of a given string and leaves just one space between all words inside the string. It takes care of extra spaces caused by empty cells. SUBSTITUTE is used to replace each space (” “) with a comma and space (“, “). We used a delimiter to join cells.

We get the results below:

 

TRIM Function - Example 3b

 

Click here to download the sample Excel file

 

Additional Resources

Thanks for reading CFI’s guide to this important Excel function. By taking the time to learn and master these functions, you’ll significantly speed up your financial modeling. To learn more, check out these additional CFI resources:

Article Sources

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