Chapter 25: Importing and Cleaning Data
2525
FIGURE 25.25
The gaps are gone, and this list can now be sorted.
This workbook, named fill in gaps.xlsx, is available on this book’s website at http://www.wiley
.com/go/excel2019bible.Checking spelling
If you use a word-processing program, you probably take advantage of its spell-checker fea-
ture. Spelling mistakes can be embarrassing when they appear in a text document, but they
can cause serious problems when they occur within your data. For example, if you tabulate
data by month, a misspelled month name will make it appear that a year has 13 months.
To access the Excel spell-checker, choose Review ➪ Proofing ➪ Spelling, or press F7. To
check the spelling in just a particular range, select the range before you activate the
spell-checker.
If the spell-checker finds any words it doesn’t recognize as correct, it displays the Spelling
dialog box. The options are fairly self-explanatory.
See Chapter 19, “Making Your Formulas Error-Free,” for more about the Spelling dialog box.Replacing or removing text in cells
You may need to replace (or remove) certain characters systematically in a column of data.
For example, you may need to replace all backslash characters with forward slash char-
acters. In many cases, you can use Excel’s Find and Replace dialog box to accomplish this
task. To remove text using the Find and Replace dialog box, just leave the Replace With
field empty.