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Remove invisible "Tab" characters


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When I copy and paste a column of data from a sheet in Numbers into AirTable it is pasting invisible tab characters on either side. I can’t see these in the cell but they show up further down the line when using the text in formulas to create social media posts from the data.

Is there any way to automatically remove these invisible characters?

3 replies

ScottWorld
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  • Brainy
  • 8814 replies
  • December 27, 2021

Those tab characters represent the separation between fields.

Are you trying to put those values into different fields in Airtable? If so, then export your data out of Numbers as a CSV file and then import the CSV file into Airtable.

If you’re trying to put all those values into the same field in Airtable, then you would need to do a find & replace of those invisible tab characters using any code editor or text editor that lets you handle invisible characters, such as my personal favorite Nova:


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  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • 18 replies
  • December 27, 2021
ScottWorld wrote:

Those tab characters represent the separation between fields.

Are you trying to put those values into different fields in Airtable? If so, then export your data out of Numbers as a CSV file and then import the CSV file into Airtable.

If you’re trying to put all those values into the same field in Airtable, then you would need to do a find & replace of those invisible tab characters using any code editor or text editor that lets you handle invisible characters, such as my personal favorite Nova:


I’m pasting them to create new records for each row. Weirs thing is that this didn’t always happen and I’m pretty sure I’m not doing anything differently.

Will try the CSV route though I’m trying to minimise steps.

Thanks!


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  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • 18 replies
  • December 29, 2021

Opening in Drive rather than Numbers seems to have fixed this.


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