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CLEAN
CLEAN strips control characters and other non-printable characters that may be imported from databases, web pages, or other systems, returning a clean version of the text. Use it as a preprocessing step before sorting, searching, or displaying imported data that contains hidden characters causing unexpected behavior.
Excel
=CLEAN(A2)Google Sheets
=CLEAN(A2)✓
Verified example
Computed by a real spreadsheet engine on the sample data below.
| RawText |
| Hello World |
| Data Entry |
| Report Name |
| Item Label |
=CLEAN(A2)→Hello World
Try it with your data
Edit the grid or formula, then run it through a real spreadsheet engine — no signup.
Sample data — click any cell to edit
Runs server-side · free · no signup
How it works
- 1Identify the cell or range containing text with potential non-printable characters.
- 2Enter =CLEAN(text) referencing the source cell.
- 3Optionally combine with TRIM to also remove leading, trailing, and excess internal spaces.
Need a version for your data?
Try: “Remove hidden control characters from text imported from an external database”