Question

I have what seems like a simple problem with some data in Excel. I have a lot of data with leading spaces pasted from a web table, and I would like to get rid of the initial space. I cribbed the following code (I am completely new to VBA), but it doesn’t seem to work. When I step through it in the debugger it looks like an infinite loop. Any help would be appreciated!

Sub DoTrim()
  For Each cell In Selection.Cells
    If cell.HasFormula = False Then
      cell = Trim(cell)
    End If
  Next
End Sub

EDIT:
It does look like the TRIM function is running into problems with a “space” character. This code:

Sub DoTrim()
Dim cell As Range, areaToTrim As Range
Set areaToTrim = Selection.Cells
For Each cell In areaToTrim
    cell.Value = "MUPPET"
Next cell
End Sub

Changed the value of the cells, so I guess it’s a non-space whitespace! Any idea on how to get rid of those?

Answer 1

If you have a non-printing character at the front of the string try this

Option Explicit
Sub DoTrim()
    Dim cell As Range
    Dim str As String
    Dim nAscii As Integer
    For Each cell In Selection.Cells
        If cell.HasFormula = False Then
            str = Trim(CStr(cell))
            If Len(str) > 0 Then
                nAscii = Asc(Left(str, 1))
                If nAscii &lt 33 Or nAscii = 160 Then
                    If Len(str) &gt 1 Then
                        str = Right(str, Len(str) - 1)
                    Else
                        strl = ""
                    End If
                End If
            End If
            cell=str
        End If
    Next
End Sub