Clean Text

Runs 100% locally

Trim extra spaces and strip out odd characters.

description Using contacts_messy.csv from the upload screen.

Preview: contacts_messy.csv

4,120 rows, 4 columns

check Show hidden characters

· Whitespace ” Smart / special ␣ Control

	name	email	company	notes
0	·Jane Doe·	jane@acme.io	Acme·Inc.	VIP”
1	Bob Smith	bob@globex.com∅	Globex	—␣
2	Ana López	ana@initech.com	Initech·	follow up
3	→Wei Chen	WEI@umbrella.co	Umbrella	“key—account”

Options

Preset

excel-hygiene (recommended) minimal paranoid

minimal: trim and collapse whitespace only — no character substitutions.
excel-hygiene: trim, collapse whitespace, fold smart quotes, strip invisible chars, normalize line endings, and normalize accented characters.
paranoid: everything in excel-hygiene plus strip control characters, strip BOM, and normalize accented and look-alike characters (lossy).

Advanced options

check Trim leading/trailing whitespace

check Collapse internal whitespace

check Normalize line endings (\r\n → \n)

check Strip control characters

check Strip BOM

check Fold smart characters (curly quotes, em-dash, NBSP)

check Strip zero-width / invisible characters

check Normalize accented characters (NFC)

Normalize accented and look-alike characters (lossy: ① → 1, ﬁ → fi)

Scope

Columns to clean (default: all string columns)

name ✕ email ✕ company ✕ notes ✕

Columns to skip even if they look like text

Choose columns to leave untouched

Case conversion

Apply case conversion to selected columns

None

Results

Cells scanned

16,480

Cells changed

3,947

% changed

24.0%

Columns processed

check Show hidden characters (NBSP, ZWSP, smart quotes, control chars…)

Same setting as “Show hidden characters” in the preview above — toggling either updates both.

Changes by column

column	cells_changed
company	1,604
name	1,210
notes	982
email	151

Examples (first 25 changes)

Row	Column	Before	After	Ops applied
1	name	·Jane Doe·	Jane Doe	trim
1	company	Acme·Inc.	Acme Inc.	fold_smart
1	notes	VIP”	VIP"	fold_smart
2	name	Bob··Smith	Bob Smith	collapse_ws
2	email	bob@globex.com∅	bob@globex.com	strip_zero_width
2	notes	—␣	—	strip_control
3	company	Initech·	Initech	trim
4	name	→Wei Chen	Wei Chen	trim
4	notes	“key—account”	"key-account"	fold_smart, nfc

Cleaned preview (first 10 rows)

	name	email	company	notes
0	Jane Doe	jane@acme.io	Acme Inc.	VIP"
1	Bob Smith	bob@globex.com	Globex	—
2	Ana López	ana@initech.com	Initech	follow up
3	Wei Chen	WEI@umbrella.co	Umbrella	"key-account"

Changed cells highlighted. Toggle “Show hidden characters” to inspect the invisibles being removed.

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