That's great - I'll try that. However, I've just found out why it wasn't
working ...! they weren't spaces! There were little invisible degree
symbols (only found it when copied into Word and show/hide) so I masnaged to
use =right(LEN) etc to trim the symbol from the left of the string and then
it would successfully paste special values to create clean data. I'll
definitley try your tip for the next time I've got spaces though. Many
thanks for replying so prompty. Sally

"N Harkawat" wrote:

> select the column that you need data trimmed
> press ctrl+H
> find: alt+0160
> replace :leave it blank
>
> replace all
>
>
> "sally t" <sallyt@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:29E60CC5-0FC2-4489-91A5-B17B98AD082D@microsoft.com...
> > Help, I want to trim a leading space from dozens of columns - headings and
> > data. I can use =trim to trim the data but when I try to copy - paste
> > special - values to grab this trimmed data, it retains the space as if it
> > were the original data! What am I doing wrong? This data is to be
> > imported
> > into Access and I can't work with it without removing the spaces. I've
> > tried
> > to trim them in Access with an update query but no success doing it that
> > way
> > either! Any help appreciated. Thank you. SAlly
>
>
>