TRIM removes ordinary leading, trailing, and repeated spaces, but it does not remove every invisible character. Text copied from a webpage can contain nonbreaking spaces that survive the operation.
Preserve and inspect the original
Compare a problematic value with a known clean example. Inspect the formula bar and source context. Keep the raw column instead of immediately overwriting it with a cleanup result.
Google’s Trim whitespace guidance explicitly excludes nonbreaking spaces. Repeating TRIM or widening the column will not necessarily fix a character that the operation does not target.
Replace only an identified character
If you have confirmed the unwanted character is a nonbreaking space, use SUBSTITUTE in a helper formula to replace that specific character with an ordinary space, then apply TRIM if appropriate.
For a visibly reviewable test, place the confirmed character in a helper cell such as F1 and use =TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(A2,$F$1," ")). Ensure F1 contains exactly the intended character, not an empty string or several characters.
Check for changes in meaning
Compare original and cleaned keys, and test lookups against known records. Check whether several previously distinct values now become identical. Cleanup that creates a match can also create an unintended duplicate.
Do not remove all whitespace indiscriminately from names, addresses, or identifiers. Other Unicode characters may require different handling, and regular-expression shortcuts are not a substitute for identifying the source. For repeated imports, retain both raw and normalized fields and document the exact permitted transformation. This makes future discrepancies explainable without attempting to reconstruct deleted source characters.
References
Reviewed against the linked official product guidance on November 3, 2026. Features, limits, screen labels, and access can vary by account, platform, region, and organization policy.