Im trying to use excel to remove a leading space from a cell, however
TRIM(A1) function is not working to remove the space. In addition, I
get a ?NAME error if I try to use LTRIM. Anyone know how to solve
this?

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Request for Question Clarification by hammer-ga on 17 Apr 2005 20:15 PDT

ms2005-ga,

TRIM(A1) is working fine for me. Could you describe what you mean by
not working? What did you type in A1? What does TRIM(A1) return?

- Hammer

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Clarification of Question by ms2005-ga on 17 Apr 2005 20:45 PDT

Hammer- see this- 
Music
 music
 music download
 free music downloads
 music video

See how those have leading spaces in front of them? Pretend that was
column "A". In column "B" I set a function "=TRIM(A1)" then on the
next line "=TRIM(A2)" etc. But it will not get the space out for me.
Can you tell me the exact steps to make TRIM work? Maybe I need to
have something highlighted or??? Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by hammer-ga on 18 Apr 2005 04:45 PDT

So, if it says in A1
 music

... When you put the following formula in B1:
=TRIM(A1)

... B1 displays
 music

... instead of
music

Is this correct, or are you seeing something else?

- Hammer

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Clarification of Question by ms2005-ga on 18 Apr 2005 07:51 PDT

-Hammer-

That is how it should work- and yet it is not removing the leading
space for me. My formulas etc look to be correct. It might be having
something selected differently etc? Any additional thoughts?

I suspect that the reason TRIM isn't working is because the leading
space is a hard space - char(160) rather than a regular space,
char(32). The simplest way to solve this is to highlight the leading
character from the formula bar and copy it to the clipboard using
ctrl-c. Then, go to replace in the edit menu and paste the character
using ctrl-v into the "search for" box. In the "replace with" box,
just hit the space bar once. Click on replace all. You could just
leave the "replace with" box empty, but there's a danger that it would
replace legitimate spaces with nothing, removing the spaces. When you
have replaced all the hard spaces, TRIM should work properly.

Yup, what joet31124-ga says will work fine.