Three new features for formatting and working with data in Sheets
What's changed?
We're introducing three new features that will help you clean up and work with your data in Sheets. That is:
- Remove duplicates
- Trim whitespace
- Compatible keyboard shortcuts
Who is affected?
End users
Why you’d use it
Remove duplicates:
This is a highly requested feature, you can use this tool to easily remove duplicate values in your worksheet, you don't need to write commands or manually delete duplicate data. This will save you quite a bit of time.
Trim whitespace:
When you add data to a worksheet, sometimes it may not be in the format you need. Now you can easily keep your worksheet standardized by using whitespace trimming to remove any leading or trailing whitespace, or excessive whitespace from a cell or array of data. .
Compatible keyboard shortcuts:
You can now use common keyboard shortcuts from other spreadsheets in Sheets. These familiar keyboard shortcuts will help users navigate and work with data in Sheets faster.
How to start the feature?
Admins: No action required
End users:
- To remove duplicate data:
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- Select the data range in your worksheet.
- From the toolbar, select Data > Remove duplicates. In the dialog box, you will see the data range you selected.
- Select Remove duplicates. You will see a dialog box detailing how much duplicate data has been removed from your dataset.
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- To trim spaces:
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- Select a cell or range of data that contains spaces on your worksheet;
- From the toolbar, select Data > Trim whitespace
- You'll see a dialog box detailing how many spaces were removed.
- To enable compatibility shortcuts:
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- Users can access shortcuts by selecting them Help > Keyboard shortcuts (shortcuts).
- From here, you can see a list of keyboard shortcuts and their corresponding commands. Note that compatible shortcuts will be indicated by an information icon.
- At the bottom, you can enable compatible keyboard shortcuts.
- Tap “View compatible shortcuts” in the lower right corner to see a full list of all the new shortcuts available.
- Users can access shortcuts by selecting them Help > Keyboard shortcuts (shortcuts).
Additional information
The feature of removing duplicate data and trimming whitespace will be supported in Apps Script, macro recording and API platform in early June 2019.