How to get rid of extra spaces when copying a table from Excel to Powerpoint

Question

I have been facing this problem from times immemorial. Whenever I copy a table with data, either numbers or text, from Excel to Powerpoint, most of the time I get numerous spaces before the data, which never existed in the Excel file.

It takes a lot of time to get rid of them. I follow some of these, with mixed success:

1. Using the replace function, but mostly it gets rids of all the spaces among other text also

2. Manually deleted each space

3. Trying to keep the numbers in simple Number format, eliminates space before numbers, but this does not solve the spaces before text issues

I've faced this with Office 2007, 2010, and 2013.

Solution 1

This is not a bug in Excel or PowerPoint, I think I was able to figure out the reason for it and the solution was not far off.

What I think is happening is the date/text/negative/positive formatting that you are using in Excel is causing this.

For example, in the tables I was using, I wanted:

1. Negative numbers as : (52.3) instead of -52.324
2. Positive numbers as : 23.7 instead of 23.687
3. And Zero as : - instead of 0.0

Thus when going into the 'custom' Category in 'More Number Formats' dialogue box, the format was showing as:

_(* #,##0_);_(* (#,##0);_(* "-"??_);_(@_)

So when pasting the number into PowerPoint, I guess it was saving all the character spaces, so I read on the custom formats at Microsoft's Create or delete a custom number format, which I suggest you should too, in case you want to be creating your own custom formats.

And then I replaced that horrible looking text with:

*0.0;(0.0);-*

And voila!

Hope this helps anybody who still faces this issue. :)

Solution 2

Yes, this problem has been around a while. Perhaps the ideal solution is to have Microsoft recognize the problem and have it fixed from their end.

Making Microsoft listen and recognize it is another problem though. I would suggest providing feedback at every opportunity, and if you have support, raise the issue. MS have email/support contacts so probably possible to raise that way.

A possible work-around, while we wait for the ideal fix, is:

1. In Excel replace space with some other seldom used temp character (example ~, |, or ^)
2. Copy data from excel into other app (can be Powerpoint, Word, etc).
3. From other app, select the pasted table, then do replace-all of spaces with nothing
4. From other app, while the pasted table is still selected, do replace-all of temp character used in step 1 with space

Solution 3

Try creating a blank table in powerpoint and then copy paste the contents from Excel.

Solution 4

I've found that this happens when my excel cells have some kind of "Custom" format (or even by clicking the "comma style" button). To fix, I change the excel cell formatting back to "Number" format before pasting in powerpoint. This prevents all the annoying spaces from being copied into powerpoint.

Good luck.

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Comments

[Admin]

support.office.com/en-us/article/…

[Arjan]

As for "Then u have to DoubleClick a target cell and copy a space" it seems to me you have different types of spaces in your Excel data that you wanted to remove. However, the question is about Excel data without any spaces, for which spaces magically appear after pasting in PowerPoint.

[Firee]

Please read my question, this method is already tried

[CharlieRB]

Welcome to Super User. Please be aware you have posted an answer to a question that is very old. Although there is nothing wrong with doing so, just be aware you may not get a response.

[Admin]

Why Outlook? Outlook does not even come with all editions of Microsoft Office.

[phuclv]

wrong, CONCATENATE(A1:H1) will not give the results from A1 to H1 concatenated. Hence there's no reason to use the CONCATENATE function