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Dave Peterson Dave Peterson is offline
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Default how to I remove these odd squares from spreadsheet?

Chip Pearson has a very nice addin that will help determine what that
character(s) is:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CellView.htm

You may be able to use Edit|Replace to change the character--Some characters can
be entered by holding the alt-key and typing the hex number on the numeric
keypad. For example, alt-0010 (or ctrl-j) can be used for linefeeds. But I've
never been able to get alt-0013 to work for carriage returns.

Another alternative is to fix it via a formula:

=substitute(a1,char(##),"")
or
=substitute(a1,char(##)," ")

Replace ## with the ASCII value you see in Chip's addin.

Or you could use a macro (after using Chip's CellView addin):

Option Explicit
Sub cleanEmUp()

Dim myBadChars As Variant
Dim myGoodChars As Variant
Dim iCtr As Long

myBadChars = Array(Chr(##), Chr(##)) '<--What showed up in CellView?

myGoodChars = Array(" ","") '<--what's the new character, "" for nothing?

If UBound(myGoodChars) < UBound(myBadChars) Then
MsgBox "Design error!"
Exit Sub
End If

For iCtr = LBound(myBadChars) To UBound(myBadChars)
ActiveSheet.Cells.Replace What:=myBadChars(iCtr), _
Replacement:=myGoodChars(iCtr), _
LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _
MatchCase:=False
Next iCtr

End Sub

If you're new to macros, you may want to read David McRitchie's intro at:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

Joe wrote:

I created a .csv file from an old Palm Desktop application and ended
up with a bunch of these odd squares in many of the cells. I tried to
cut one and paste it into 'find/replace' but it doesn't show up. Aside
from deleting every one of them manually is there a way I can get rid
of them automatically?

Here's a link to a screenshot I took of a couple of cells

http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?i...squareseu6.jpg


--

Dave Peterson