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Related Function : TRIM Function

Basic Description

The Excel CLEAN function takes a supplied text string and removes all non-printable characters.

The function is designed to remove the non-printable characters, represented by numbers 0 to 31 of the 7-bit ASCII code, which are often found at the start of data that has been imported into Excel from other applications.

The format of the Excel Clean function is:

where the argument, text, can be supplied to the function directly, or can be a reference to a cell containing text.

Note that the Clean function differs from the Trim Function in that the Trim function removes additional spaces (represented by the ASCII numeric code 32), while the Clean Function removes characters with the ASCII numerics codes 0 to 31.

Example

The example below shows the Clean function used on four different text strings. The formulas are shown in the spreadsheet on the left and the results are shown in the spreadsheet on the right.

Note that all four of the above cases, give the same result, which is simply the string "clean text".