Why does Excel 2010 insert a trailing space when copying cell content?

Question

When I copy a cell (Excel 2010) and paste the contents into another application (browser address bar, word document) the contents are pasted with a trailing space. Any idea why this occurs and how to get rid of it?

This only happens when I click once on a cell and click copy. If I double click into the cell, highlight the content and then copy and paste it, the values come out normally.

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. Before staring the troubleshooting steps just a few quick questions:

1. Does the issue occur with a particular Excel file or all the Excel files?
2. While pasting the contents from Excel to Word choose the option Keep Source formatting and check.

When pasting in Word click on Paste and choose the option Keep Source Formatting.

Open Excel in safe mode. Follow the steps listed below to open Excel in safe mode:

• Close Excel.
• Click on Start< All Programs< Accessories< Run
• In Run window and type Excel /safe

Note: There is a space between Excel and /.

If you are able to work with Excel without any problem then the issue might be due to add-ins. In order to disable the add-ins follow the steps given below:

• In Excel, click on File< Options< Add-ins.
• Under Manage select COM Add-ins.
• Click on GO options beside Manage, uncheck all the add-ins and click Ok.
• Try to open Excel and check if it works fine.

Also try to change the default printer and check. Refer the link below to change the default printer in vista/win7:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-your-default-printer

I hope the above suggestion helps. If you need any further assistance reply and we will be glad to assist you.

Thanks.

Answer 2

What a ridiculous response. Everyone knows excel always adds spaces. It's not a 'problem' per se, until someone like DMangelo or myself wants a solution.

(shakes head)

on with my search for a solution

Answer 3

This drove me crazy for a while until I figured out that it's caused by the formatting of the source cells.

If they are formatted as ACCOUNTING or CUSTOM it seems to insert the space before and after the field value. This is just inline with the rules in place for the particular format chosen.

Just highlight the cells you are trying to copy and change the formatting to almost anything else.

Answer 4

Did you even read the question?

I'm going to assume this is an artifact of copying the whole cell. It copies with the hidden cell termination character or something (like you see in a word table with formatting marks on) and whatever program we paste into doesn't recognise it, so it substitutes in a space.

I don't think this is fixable, we'll just have to live with it.

Edit: viewing the pasted text in a hex editor, it appears to be a standard carriage return + line feed combo at the end of the cell: 0x0d 0x0a

Answer 5

This is unfortunately true for a lot of us who googled our way here.

There are two separate problems people are having.

1. Some people's data actually have a space, which can be fixed with a simple search-and-replace.

It may also get fixed by various workarounds like changing cell formatting.

2. Many of us don't have spaces in our data, but if we copy and paste from excel to another program, we get an unwanted

trailing space anyway.

That's because as Klebestift noted, excel automatically includes a hidden carriage return when you

copy a cell the fast way: clicking it just once, pressing ctrl+C. 

This is probably by design because Microsoft wanted to helpfully make it so that when you paste something into a cell,

it's automatically "committed" to that cell, meaning you immediately get your standard excel plus-shaped cursor afterwards.

As opposed to what you'd see if you paste something into a text box like on this site... a blinking cursor.

Pasting from Excel to Excel again won't be a problem because it knows how to handle this extra return.

But other programs don't know how to handle it, so they choose to convert it to a space, which can be annoying

if you data needs to be EXACTLY what you copied. 

For people with that issue, you need to do a workaround - copy all the data, paste it into another program

that can handle tables or columns of data (I use Adobe Indesign, you can probably also use word),

then copy it from THAT program to its final destination.