7DEC12 A recent spreadsheet was giving me hell. It was littered with hidden apostrophes, carriage returns and was a general pain. Manually correcting 1500 rows and 28 columns was going to be ridiculous.
The cause was the importing of files that weren’t Excel or CSV.
SOLUTION Save as CSV, close the document, reopen. This clears all formatting, not only hidden apostrophes and carriage returns but, anything bold, italicized, centered or right-aligned, or colored will be rinsed out as well. So, be careful! In this situation, save as CSV was a perfect 30-second cleanse.
