OpenOffice – Remove Leading and Trailing Spaces from Cells

Our staff does a lot of data manipulation using OpenOffice Calc. We’ve always found it easier to work with data import sheets using OpenOffice over Excel, though we do like Excel for certain tasks. Here is a quick tip for removing leading spaces and trailing spaces from OpenOffice Calc worksheets.

Handling Spaces in OpenOffice

1.) Remove leading spaces from OpenOffice cells

1. Select the cells you want to change
   
2. Edit > Find & Replace
   Search for: ^s+|s+$
   Replace with: empty
   Options/Current selection only: ON
   Options/Regular expressions: ON

2.) Remove trailing spaces from OpenOffice cells

1. Select the cells you want to change
2. Edit > Find & Replace
   Search = spacebar*$
   Replace = nothing
   Check Regular Expressions

Related: Learn this easy trick to check for and to remove trailing commas!