What’s A Good Use For Find And Replace In Excel?

Find and Replace can be a great way to clean up data in Excel.  For example:

• To remove all # signs, replace # with nothing
• To remove all blanks, replace ” ” (a blank) with nothing
• To remove all dashes and everything after them, replace “-*” with nothing (the * serves as a wildcard)
• To remove all dashes and everything before them, replace “*-” with nothing

If you only want to clean up one column, just select that column first.  The same thing if you only want to clean up one block of cells (just select the block of cells first).

The “replace with nothing” technique, for some reason, isn’t widely written about.  I don’t recall reading about it anywhere, so may be I should patent it…  It can save you a ton of time.

What Are Some Good Find And Replace Excel Shortcuts?

Here are three good shortcuts.  The first two default to the Find tab.

Find & Replace Dialog Box – On “Find” Tab (keyboard #1): Ctrl+F

Find & Replace Dialog Box – On “Find” Tab (keyboard #2): Alt-E-E

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