Trim function

This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the TRIM function in Microsoft Excel.

Description

Removes all spaces from text except for single spaces between words. Use TRIM on text that you have received from another application that may have irregular spacing.

Important: The TRIM function was designed to trim the 7-bit ASCII space character (value 32) from text. In the Unicode character set, there is an additional space character called the nonbreaking space character that has a decimal value of 160. This character is commonly used in Web pages as the HTML entity,  . By itself, the TRIM function does not remove this nonbreaking space character. For an example of how to trim both space characters from text, see Top ten ways to clean your data.

Syntax

TRIM(text)

The TRIM function syntax has the following arguments:

• Text    Required. The text from which you want spaces removed.

Example

Copy the example data in the following table, and paste it in cell A1 of a new Excel worksheet. For formulas to show results, select them, press F2, and then press Enter. If you need to, you can adjust the column widths to see all the data.

Formula	Description	Result
=TRIM(" First Quarter Earnings ")	Removes leading and trailing spaces from the text in the formula (First Quarter Earnings)	First Quarter Earnings