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The TRIM function removes all spaces from a cell except for a single space between words
& can be very useful when you pull information from other systems, which may or may not add
additional characters or more especially spaces. In this example you'll see we have some part
numbers & using SUMIF we count how many a's there are, how many b's, c's etc, & you'll
see there's a total of ten & our SUMIF's are coming to 10. What happens however, if let's
say for example in this cell here, we look here, we add a simple space. When I click
enter you'll see that that space afterwards has an impact on the SUMIF because ccc as
it is not considered the same as ccc space. And this can often happen when you are pulling
information from other systems that spaces get added on at the end. The TRIM function
can help us with this, so here we've got the exact same set up but instead of taking information
as is, we can use the TRIM function, so when I go to the FUNCTION WIZARD, and I find TRIM,
say ok. The text where the text is that you want to trim, we click on it, say ok, & now
when I copy it down, you'll see that here where we had the ccc with the space, the TRIM
function is removing it, as a result the SUMIF works better & actually pulls through all
the correct information. This is just a nice way of to remove any spaces that could cause
problems later in your spreadsheet.