Three new features to format and work with data in Sheets

What’s changing 

We’re introducing three new features that will help you clean up and work with your data in Sheets. These features are: 

• Remove duplicates 
• Trim whitespace 
• Compatible spreadsheet shortcuts 

Who’s impacted 

End users

Why you’d use them 

Remove duplicates: 
A highly requested feature, you can use this tool to easily remove duplicate values from your sheet, saving you time by eliminating the need to write an app script or manually remove duplicate data.

Trim whitespace: 
Sometimes when you add data to a sheet, it may not be the format you need. Now, you can easily keep your sheet standardized by using the trim whitespace feature to remove any leading, trailing, or excessive whitespace from a cell or array of data.

Compatible keyboard shortcuts: 
You can now use popular keyboard shortcuts from other spreadsheets in Sheets. These familiar shortcuts will make navigating and working with data in Sheets quicker for users.

How to get started 

Admins: No action required.
End users:

• To remove duplicates from a range of data: 
  • Select range of data in your sheet 
  • From the toolbar, select Data > Remove duplicates. In the dialogue box, you’ll see your selected range of data. 
  • Select Remove duplicates. You’ll see an additional dialogue box that details how many duplicates were removed from your dataset.
    
• To trim whitespaces: 
  • Select a cell or range of data that contains whitespace on your sheet 
  • From the toolbar, select Data > Trim whitespace 
  • You’ll then see a dialogue box that details how many cells whitespace was removed from. 
• To enable compatible keyboard shortcuts: 
  • Users can access keyboard shortcuts by going to Help > Keyboard shortcuts. 
    • From here, you can see a list of keyboard shortcuts and their corresponding commands. Note that compatible shortcuts will be denoted with an info icon. 
    • At the bottom, you can enable compatible spreadsheet shortcuts. 
    • You can click “View compatible shortcuts” at the bottom right to see a complete list of all newly available shortcuts. 

Additional details 

The remove duplicates and trim whitespaces features will be supported in Apps Script, macro recording, and one platform APIs in early June 2019.

Helpful links 

Keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs. 
Split text, remove duplicates, or trim whitespace in Sheets.
Separate cell text into columns.