Clean up data fast with Find & Replace

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:

1. Press Ctrl + H
2. In Find what, type a full stop: .
3. In Replace with, type what you want instead — for example / or leave it blank to remove the full stops
4. 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.