How can I get rid of extra spaces in my data?

It's quite easy for unwanted spaces to creep into your data. Typically, this can happen when data is imported from a spreadsheet or another source, or when it's copied and pasted from an email or a document.

CatBase provides three ways to deal with this issue:

1. In the Field Properties

The is probably the best way ...

1. Go to Admin->Database Setup->Table and Field Setup
2. Select the table that the field belongs to.
3. Double-click the field to edit its Properties
4. Select the Trim White Space checkbox. This will remove not only spaces, but also Tab and Return characters from the beginning and end of the text whenever a record is saved.

2. When importing data

You can tell CatBase to get rid of any spaces at the beginning or end of each field:

1. In your Import Sylesheet, go to the Preferences tab.
2. In the Text Handling area, select the checkbox Trim Spaces.

3. Using Search & Replace

You can fix existing data easily also.

1. Select the table that contains the problem field.
2. Click the Search & Replace button (the second one in, in the row of buttons at the top of the list of data).
3. Select the appropriate field in the Search Field: popup list of fields.
4. Select the All Records option in the Change From area.
5. Select the Delete Surrounding Spaces radio button.
6. Click OK

You can also use Search & Replace to delete occurrences of double spaces within text - for example:

Here is some text.  There are 2 spaces after the dot.

1. Select the table that contains the problem field.
2. Click the Search & Replace button (the second one in, in the row of buttons at the top of the list of data).
3. Select the appropriate field in the Search Field: popup list of fields.
4. Select the Contains radio button in the Change From area.
5. Type two spaces into the text box.
6. In the Change To area, make sure that the first radio button is selected, then enter one space into the text box next to it.
7. Click OK.