How to remove leading and trailing spaces from all

Question

I have a excel sheet which contains lots of data with leading and trailing spaces.

Manually removing these spaces with TRIM() takes lot of time.

How can I do this efficiently.

Answer 1

To do this efficiently use a variant array, something like:

Sub VBATrim()
    Dim rng1 As Range
    Dim rngArea As Range
    Dim lngRow As Long
    Dim lngCol As Long
    Dim lngCalc As Long
    Dim X()


    On Error Resume Next
    Set rng1 = Application.InputBox("Select range for the replacement of non-number", "User select", Selection.Address, , , , , 8)
    If rng1 Is Nothing Then Exit Sub
    On Error GoTo 0


   'Speed up the code by turning off screenupdating and setting calculation to manual
   'Disable any code events that may occur when writing to cells
    With Application
        lngCalc = .Calculation
        .ScreenUpdating = False
        .Calculation = xlCalculationManual
        .EnableEvents = False
    End With

    'Test each area in the user selected range

    'Non contiguous range areas are common when using SpecialCells to define specific cell types to work on
    For Each rngArea In rng1.Areas
        'The most common outcome is used for the True outcome to optimise code speed
        If rngArea.Cells.Count > 1 Then
           'If there is more than once cell then set the variant array to the dimensions of the range area
           'Using Value2 provides a useful speed improvement over Value. On my testing it was 2% on blank cells, up to 10% on non-blanks
            X = rngArea.Value2
            For lngRow = 1 To rngArea.Rows.Count
                For lngCol = 1 To rngArea.Columns.Count
                    'replace the leading zeroes
                    X(lngRow, lngCol) = Trim(X(lngRow, lngCol))
                Next lngCol
            Next lngRow
            'Dump the updated array sans leading zeroes back over the initial range
            rngArea.Value2 = X
        Else
            'caters for a single cell range area. No variant array required
            rngArea.Value = Trim(rngArea.Value)
        End If
    Next rngArea

    'cleanup the Application settings
    With Application
        .ScreenUpdating = True
        .Calculation = lngCalc
        .EnableEvents = True
    End With

End Sub

Answer 2

Try this small macro:

Sub KleanUp()
  Dim r As Range
  For Each r In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
    v = r.Value
    If v <> "" Then
      If Not r.HasFormula Then
        r.Value = Trim(v)
      End If
    End If
  Next r
End Sub

This macro will not affect internal spaces or cells containing formulas.