The are lots of reasons to tidy up data. Perhaps your VLOOKUP formula isn’t working even though visually your data looks fine. Or perhaps you need to extract a certain part of a field so you have a unique key for your VLOOKUP or INDEX MATCH or SUMIF or COUNTIF formula (the list goes on!)
There are lots of neat tips and tricks for tidying up data. I’ve collected together links to a few tips around this blog which may help. It’s worth bookmarking this tab as this list will continue to grow to over time.
- Clean data with TRIM, CLEAN, or SUBSTITUTE (or all 3!) to remove random spaces http://f4.excelliarmus.com/trim-clean-or-substitue/
- Extract part of a cell with LEFT, MID, RIGHT http://f4.excelliarmus.com/left-mid-right/
- The alternative magical uses of Text-to-Columns! – http://f4.excelliarmus.com/magical-power-of-text-to-columns/
