Weird character causing error when trying to import Excel sheet

Question

This character " " (which isn't visible once I save this comment). It looks like 2 brackets pushed together, touching to form a tall rectangle. []

An exported Excel sheet from Filemaker (old version) causes an error and stop import at a certain row that has a recurring character.

I can only see the weird character when I copy/paste the cell contents into Wordpad. The line contains 2 unseen line break markup tags, and between them is . Whenever this happens I have to edit the contents in Wordpad, paste and then it works. Keeps showing up every few rows.

Second question. Is there a way to search for this in Excel and delete all of them?

Answer 1

We need to identify the miscreant character first and then remove it.

First put the following User Defined Function in a standard module:

Public Function WhatsIn(s As String) As String
    Dim msg As String, i As Long, L As Long

    L = Len(s)
    msg = L & vbCrLf
    For i = 1 To L
        msg = msg & i & "    " & AscW(Mid(s, i, 1)) & vbCrLf
    Next i
    WhatsIn = msg
End Function

The function tells us exactly what a cell contains. It gives:

1. the number of characters
   
2. for each character, the unicode value
   
   Here is an example:

We know how many characters cell C2 contains and we know the ASCII code for each character.

User Defined Functions (UDFs) are very easy to install and use:

1. ALT-F11 brings up the VBE window
2. ALT-I ALT-M opens a fresh module
3. paste the stuff in and close the VBE window

If you save the workbook, the UDF will be saved with it. If you are using a version of Excel later then 2003, you must save the file as .xlsm rather than .xlsx

To remove the UDF:

1. bring up the VBE window as above
2. clear the code out
3. close the VBE window

To use the UDF from Excel:

=WhatsIn(A1)

To learn more about macros in general, see:

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

and

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee814735(v=office.14).aspx

and for specifics on UDFs, see:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/WritingFunctionsInVBA.aspx

Macros must be enabled for this to work!

Once we know the ASCII number, run a macro like:

Sub KleanUp()
    Cells.Replace ChrW(166), ""
End Sub

where we would replace the 166 with the actual number.