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TM
How to Concatenate & Trim fields in Microsoft Excel
Written by:
Sean Bair, Program Manager Crime Mapping & Analysis
Program
National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center, a
Program of the National Institute of Justice
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
copied in any form or by any means graphic, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, taping, or information storage
and retrieval systems without permission of the Crime Mapping and
Analysis Program, Denver, Colorado.
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How to Concatenate & Trim fields in Excel Open Excel. Open
the file that contains fields you wish to combine into one field. I
will walk you through this process with the example Excel file
shown to the right. It contains 4 fields that we want to combine
into one new Address field. There are 4 records to perform the
concatenation against. Insert a new variable that will contain the
combined fields. Call it Address. Click on the cell in your new
variable that is directly to the right of the fields you wish to
concatenate. If the example to the right, we would click in the E2
cell because we want to join cells A2 through D2 for record #2. We
only need to do this function/process for one record as we will
copy the formula to the other records (records 3 through 5.)
Select the function button from the toolbar. Select the Text
function category and CONCATENATE from the function name list.
Click OK.
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The CONCATENATE dialog box should appear. You should move the
dialog box to where you can see the row you wish to concatenate. In
our case, we want to be able to see row 2, as this is the row we
want to concatenate. To move the dialog box, simply click on the
dialog box (anywhere), hold your left mouse button down and drag
the dialog to its new location. Release the mouse to set the
dialogs new position. We now want to select those variables we want
to join together. You could either type the fields into the Text
boxes or use your mouse to select them in the proper join sequence.
For instance, click in the Text1 text box located on the
concatenate dialog. Now click on Cell A2 from the grid. A2 will be
placed in the Text1 box. Now click Text2 on the concatenate dialog.
Insert a blank space by typing . If you do not perform this step,
your data may not contain spaces between the concatenated words.
Repeat these steps to include all the fields you wish to join. You
can see the results from the formula on the bottom center of the
concatenate dialog box. Click OK to complete the formula and join
the fields. Notices that the results show in E2 contain the
concatenated (joined) fields. However, the formula viewer doesnt
show the address but the formula that created the address. If you
were to save the results out at this time to a dbase IV file, only
the formula would display in the Address variable. We need to copy
the formula to the other cells (E3 through E5) and then copy the
results and paste them into a new variable containing only the
values.
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To automatically copy the formula from E2 to the remainder of
your data (in our case E5), move your mouse cursor over the bottom
rightmost corner of cell E2. A crosshair cursor icon will appear.
While you have the crosshair icon visible, double-click the left
mouse button. This will auto-populate the remainder of the cells to
the end of the data with the concatenate formula. The resulting
auto-populate function should return a concatenated result for each
record in your data. We must now copy the results of our
concatenate into a new field containing only the results and not
the formulas. Click on the column header for column E. The entire
column should highlight. Select Copy from the Edit menu. Click on
the column header for column F. Column F should now be highlighted.
While over any portion of column F, click your right mouse button.
The Edit menu popup will appear. Select the Paste Special. Command
from the available choices.
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The Paste Special dialog will appear. Select Values from the
Paste radio buttons. This will paste only the text values of the
copied concatenate field into the new column thus eliminating the
formula used to create the field. Now we must delete the original
field used to concatenate. So, click the column header for column
E. The column will highlight. While over any portion of column E,
click the right mouse button. The Edit menu popup will appear. From
the list of available choices, click the Delete option. Column E
will be deleted from the spreadsheet and the other columns will
take its place in the order of variables. At this point you have
successfully concatenated fields in Excel. We will demonstrate one
more feature in Excel that may be necessary if your data contains
extra spaces. This may have occurred if one of the concatenated
fields was empty during the process. If so, there will be extra
spaces. We will use the Trim function to remove extra spaces from
our address field.
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We must first create a new variable that will contain the
trimmed address information. In column F at row 1, type Address.
Now move the cursor and click in cell F2. This cell will accept the
trimmed address formula. This process uses the exact same steps as
performed in the concatenate function. First, select the Fx or
function button from the toolbar. Select Text from the function
category box to the left and TRIM from the function name list box
on the right. Click OK. If necessary, move the trim dialog beneath
your work area as shown in the picture to the right. Click in the
Text box located on the Trim dialog. Now select the field you want
to trim in our case it is cell E2 that contains the address field.
Click OK. Now that you have a new value in the F2 cell, move your
mouse cursor over the rightmost bottom corner of cell F2. Again,
the crosshair icon will appear. Once the crosshair icon appears,
double-click the left mouse button. This will automatically
populate all the remaining cells in column F with the formula in
F2.
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The results of the previous step are shown to the right. Each
cell in column F should contain a trimmed address from column E. We
must now copy the contents of column F (which contain not only the
trimmed values but the underlying formula) and paste the values
into a new column. Click the column header for column F. While your
mouse cursor is over any portion of column F, click the right mouse
button. From the Edit popup menu, select Copy. Click in the column
header for column G to highlight the entire column. While over any
portion of column G, click the right mouse button. From the popup
menu choose Paste Special
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From the Paste Special dialog, select Values from the Paste
radio button. Click OK. Now we want to remove the two Address
fields as they contain formula behind the scenes. So, click the
column header to column E and while holding down the left mouse
button, move it to the right and select column F. You should now
have both columns highlighted as shown in the example to the right.
While over any portion of the highlighted area, click the right
mouse button. From the popup Edit menu, click the Delete option.
The results of deleting both columns should be similar as in the
example to the right. Now we must increase the width of column E so
that it is as wide as the widest value in our new Address variable.
To do this, move the mouse pointer over the column header divider
between columns E and F. The mouse pointer will change from an
arrow to a double left-right arrow. While this mouse pointer icon
is visible, double-click the left mouse button. The column width of
field E will auto size to fit the largest value in column E.
Finally, click anywhere in the grid to remove the column highlight.
At this point you could save the contents of the spreadsheet to a
dbase IV file accessible from ArcView.
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The processes just shown, Concatenate and Trim, can be performed
on all types and formats of data brought into Excel. If you find
yourself performing this or any Excel process/function on a routine
basis, you may want to research the Macro function. Macros will
record your keystrokes while inside Excel and allow you to play
them back later against other data. The trick to Macros is to
assure that the Macro is recording the keystrokes against data that
will be formatted identically each and every time. For instance,
you wouldnt want to record a keystroke that instructed Excel to
delete column E containing the Address if the next time you brought
in data the Address variable was contained in column F. The Macro
will only perform the sequence of keystroke events as it relates to
Excel. It cannot distinguish between values or variables in the
data. There are ways to have it perform these types of complex
decisions, but that is for another article ;-)