We have had a number of queries relating to trying to delete spaces in numbers so that Excel treats them as numbers.
See the updated post on removing spaces that Excel doesn't recognise
It seems that if you manually delete the space it works, but if you try a FIND REPLACE or formula it doesn’t work. Most of these data lists appear to be downloads from other systems or extracts from web sites, share details etc.
The trick here is to realise that these are not spaces (no matter how similar they look to a space).
Instead of typing a ‘space’ into the FIND REPLACE dialogue box, copy the space from the offending cell and paste this into the dialogue box or formula.
Please forward to anyone who has spent hours manually deleting these ‘spaces’