🧹 Dirty data stealing HOURS from you every week?
Imagine this: You download a report from your ERP, import a sales CSV or extract data from the web... and it's total chaos! Inconsistent texts, extra spaces, numbers stored as text, empty cells that break everything...
Most professionals spend 5-10 hours weekly cleaning data manually. Sound familiar? Errors that lead to wrong reports and bad decisions.
Keep using frustrating manual methods? ❌
Or automate in minutes with smart tools? ✅
In this article, I show you the most common problems, how you solve them manually (the usual "suffering") and how Data Tools Suite does it in seconds. Get ready to reclaim your time!
🔍 The most frequent problems when preparing data in Excel
When data comes from ERP systems, legacy software or the web:
⚡ From manual suffering to automatic solution
Here's the real contrast: how you do it today vs. with Data Tools Suite.
1. Standardize texts (uppercase, lowercase, spaces, accents)
🔴 Manual method (the classic suffering)
- Insert helper column → =UPPER(A1), =LOWER(A1), =PROPER(A1) for formats.
- =TRIM(A1) to remove extra spaces.
- For accents/symbols: Find and Replace one by one (á→a, é→e, ñ→n... dozens of times!).
- Copy and Paste Values back to the original range. With large tables: hours and high risk of errors.
🟢 With Manipulate Text from Data Tools Suite
Select the range → choose options (uppercase, lowercase, remove spaces/accents, etc.) → one click and done!
Watch demo video:
2. Fill empty cells
🔴 Manual method
- Select range → Ctrl+G (Go To) → Special → Blank cells.
- Type =cell above (e.g., =A1) → Ctrl+Enter.
- For constant values or formulas: repetitive steps and easy to make mistakes in large tables.
🟢 With Fill Empty Cells
Select range → choose method (above, constant, formula) → apply in seconds.
Watch demo video:
3. Mass operations on ranges (convert formats, adjust values)
🔴 Manual method
- Create helper columns with formulas (=VALUE(A1), round, add factor...).
- Apply to thousands of rows → Copy and Paste Values back to original range.
- Repetitive, slow and memory-intensive in large files.
🟢 With Operations on a Range
Select range → choose operation (round, invert sign, convert text to number) → apply directly.
4. Select and clean (duplicates, errors, conditions)
🔴 Manual method
- For duplicates: Remove Duplicates (but only by selected columns, not always perfect).
- For conditions: Advanced filters + manual row selection → time-consuming and error-prone.
- Cells with errors: complex formulas or visual review.
🟢 With Select and Filter
Define criteria (empty, duplicated, errors, text/numeric) → select entire rows and apply actions (delete, color).
Watch demo video:
Advanced bonus: If you need to "unpivot" columns like in Power Query, the manual formula method is endless. Use Rotate Columns from Data Tools Suite to do it in one click.
⏱️ The real savings: Manual vs. Data Tools Suite
| Task (10k rows) | Manual | Data Tools Suite | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standardize texts | 2-4 hours | 20-40 seconds | 99% |
| Fill empties | 1-2 hours | 10 seconds | 99% |
| Operations on range | 1-3 hours | 30 seconds | 99% |
| Clean errors | 2+ hours | 1 minute | 97% |
| WEEKLY TOTAL | 6-12 hours | 5 minutes | Up to $600/month |
💡Conclusion: Stop suffering and automate your data cleaning
Manual methods work... but they steal valuable time. With Data Tools Suite you have everything in a powerful and easy suite.
Clean data → perfect reports → personalized sends with MultiMail (as in the previous article).
This article is a translation of the original in Spanish.
