Trim Leading/Trailing Spaces

hparx

This is pretty basic but I'm not sure what formula to use in Smartsheet to trim any leading / trailing spaces from values that are entered into cells. In excel this is a simple TRIM formula but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent in Smartsheet. I've tried the formula glossary and AI but unfortunately I'm not finding the answer.

Jovana.Perkovic

Hi @hparx ,

Smartsheet does have TRIM, but it only removes normal spaces (CHAR(32)).

If your text has invisible non-breaking spaces (CHAR(160), super common when pasting from the web or PDFs), TRIM won’t catch them.

Here’s the fix:

=TRIM(SUBSTITUTE([Column Name]@row , CHAR(160), " "))

What this does:

• CHAR(32) = normal space
• CHAR(160) = non-breaking space
• TRIM only removes CHAR(32), so we first convert the CHAR(160) “fake spaces” into real ones… then TRIM cleans everything up.

Simple version:

Replace weird spaces → then trim → clean text.

Try it out and tell me if it does the trick :)