PSA: Using wildcard flags in your work is a bad idea

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Arg. Client sends a large Excel file and has cells with * for separators instead of something normal like a space.

Hugh*Jorgan
Mike*Hunt

Wtf would you do that?

You can't do a find and replace since the * does the "all" flag and erases everything. So now someone has to go and remove the *, or I have to go do some searching and see if there is a way around it. And of course the client sends it at the last minute for me to look through and fix :|

(granted in the example above you could just text to columns probably and put the * in it's own column and delete it, but no such luck with yesterday's)

Another gal has filled some databases with * to remind her to go back and fill those spots in. Please don't do that

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Quick solution is to copy and paste into a different text editor like notepad, do the replace all, and then copy it back into the excel file.

But yeah, no idea what logical reasoning they used to decide on that.

 

[kranky]

Put a tilde in front of the asterisk in the find/replace box and it will work.

Now watch dullard come in here after me and improve on my answer.

 

[dullard]

Control - H (find and replace)
Find: '~*' (Tilda means don't do a wildcard search for the next character
Replace ' ' (Space)

 

[dougp]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
Quick solution is to copy and paste into a different text editor like notepad, do the replace all, and then copy it back into the excel file.

But yeah, no idea what logical reasoning they used to decide on that.

That's what I was going to suggest. And it probably was some type of exported file, and the delimiter is an astericks?