Export to Excel Removes Spaces Before Links

[MBBailey]

I have exported a List from SharePoint to Excel. The list is a glossary of terms and the terms link to other terms in the list.

In the exported spreadsheet, there isn't a space between words when the second word is a linked word. For example, if the sentence says: "A new software package" and "software" has a link, the spreadsheet has it as: "A newsoftware package."

The HTML code uses one simple <div> tag per glossary entry, and no other formatting at the item level.

I have 800+ items in this glossary and hundreds of links, so I am editing every single item manually in the spreadsheet to add the spaces between the words. I am not looking forward to having to do all of this manual work each time I export!

Anyone have any ideas how I can change/fix this so it doesn't happen in the first place - or an easier way to fix them in the spreadsheet?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I'm sure there is a better way, however as a workaround, you could create a workflow to copy the text into a plain text column and then export and remove/hide the original from the exported data. That is assuming the exported does not have the hyperlinks, which of my test it didn't. Another option would be to copy the data from the list into excel and use a formula to remove the additional HTML leaving only the text

[#3]

Two excellent ideas. Thanks so much, Josh. I will give those a try.

[#4]

Happy to help I'd be Interested to see the solution, the workflow could also be used as an on going solution triggered when an item is created or modified