Dara Cleansing

[bcu_xl]

Does anybody have any tips for large data set cleansing in excel. I work with data that originates from many different places like data warehouses, webpages, various applications. A lot of clutter comes along with it like non printable characters, spaces, html, unicode and many other things that throw off macros. Things that I already use: trim, clean, substitute, replace, 'pasting blank', forcing re-calculations. What are some other strategies for cleansing data?

 

[JoeMo]

I've had reasonable success cleaning up imported data using this code from David McRitchie. Select all the data you want to cleanse first, then run the macro:

Sub TrimALLMcRitchie()
      Application.DisplayAlerts = True
      Application.EnableEvents = True   'should be part of Change Event macro
   If Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual Then
      MsgBox "Calculation was OFF will be turned ON upon completion"
   End If
   
   Application.ScreenUpdating = False
   Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
   Dim cell As Range
   'Also Treat CHR 0160, as a space (CHR 032)
   Selection.Replace What:=Chr(160), replacement:=Chr(32), _
     lookat:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False
   Selection.Replace What:=Chr(13) & Chr(10), replacement:=Chr(32), _
        lookat:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False
   Selection.Replace What:=Chr(13), replacement:=Chr(32), _
        lookat:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False
   Selection.Replace What:=Chr(21), replacement:=Chr(32), _
        lookat:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False
   '---------------------------
   Selection.Replace What:=Chr(8), replacement:=Chr(32), _
      lookat:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False
   Selection.Replace What:=Chr(9), replacement:=Chr(32), _
      lookat:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False
   'Trim in Excel removes extra internal spaces, VBA does not
   On Error Resume Next
   For Each cell In Intersect(Selection, _
      Selection.SpecialCells(xlConstants, xlTextValues))
     cell.Value = Application.Trim(cell.Value)
   Next cell
   On Error GoTo 0
   Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
   Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub