If you ever receive spreadsheets from other systems or people, you’ve probably seen inconsistent formatting — especially with things like dates, codes, or product numbers. Fixing them cell by cell is slow and frustrating.
Excel has a built-in tool that can fix this in seconds.
Press Ctrl + H to open Find and Replace.
This lets you search for something and replace it with something else across a whole sheet, or even an entire workbook.
Example: Removing full stops from dates
Let’s say your dates look like this:
15.01.2026
but you need them to be:
15/01/2026 or 15012026.
Here’s how to fix them:
- Press Ctrl + H
- In Find what, type a full stop: .
- In Replace with, type what you want instead — for example / or leave it blank to remove the full stops
- Click Replace All
Excel will instantly update every date in the selected range (or the whole sheet) in one go.
This same trick works for:
- Removing spaces or unwanted characters
- Changing commas to full stops
- Fixing codes, postcodes, or reference numbers
It’s one of the fastest ways to clean up messy data - and a huge time-saver when working with imported spreadsheets.