Can someone tell me how to view hidden characters in a cell. Apparently
identical text is not being read as identical.

Sure, I can help you with that! To view hidden characters in a cell, you can follow these steps:

1. Select the cell or cells that you want to view the hidden characters for.
2. In the Home tab of the ribbon, click on the "Find & Select" button (it looks like a pair of binoculars).
3. From the drop-down menu, select "Replace".
4. In the "Find what" field, type in a single space character (just hit the spacebar once).
5. In the "Replace with" field, type in the same single space character.
6. Click on the "Options" button to expand the options.
7. Check the box next to "Match case".
8. Check the box next to "Match entire cell contents".
9. Click on the "Replace All" button.

This will replace all the space characters in the selected cells with the same space character, but it will also reveal any hidden characters that may be present. You should now be able to see any hidden characters that were causing the issue with identical text not being read as identical.

Hi,

Identical text will be evaluated as identical but 2 text strings may look
identical but not be and a common cause is rogue spaces which can be got rid
of with

=trim(a1) where A1 is your string.

Mike

"fitou_learn" wrote:

Can someone tell me how to view hidden characters in a cell. Apparently
identical text is not being read as identical.

Is it possible to view the rogue spaces?

"Mike H" wrote:

Hi,

Identical text will be evaluated as identical but 2 text strings may look
identical but not be and a common cause is rogue spaces which can be got rid
of with

=trim(a1) where A1 is your string.

Mike

"fitou_learn" wrote:

Can someone tell me how to view hidden characters in a cell. Apparently
identical text is not being read as identical.

Hi,

Seeing a space at the end/start of a word would be an imposing challenge.
You can test for them being there with

=LEN(a1)

will return the number of characters in the cell including leading/trailling
spaces.

Mike

"fitou_learn" wrote:

Is it possible to view the rogue spaces?

"Mike H" wrote:

Hi,

Identical text will be evaluated as identical but 2 text strings may look
identical but not be and a common cause is rogue spaces which can be got rid
of with

=trim(a1) where A1 is your string.

Mike

"fitou_learn" wrote:

Can someone tell me how to view hidden characters in a cell. Apparently
identical text is not being read as identical.

You can read each character by =MID(A1,COLUMNS($1:1),1) [or
=CODE(MID($A1,COLUMN(A1),1)) to see the hidden ones] copied across as many
columns as you need.
--
David Biddulph

"fitou_learn" wrote in message
...
Can someone tell me how to view hidden characters in a cell. Apparently
identical text is not being read as identical.

Chip Pearson has a very nice addin that will help determine what those
characters a
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CellView.htm

fitou_learn wrote:

Can someone tell me how to view hidden characters in a cell. Apparently
identical text is not being read as identical.

--

Dave Peterson