Read a space-grouped amount

Spaces as thousands separators

French, Polish, Czech, Nordic and many other conventions group digits with a space: 1 234,50. In typeset documents and PDF exports that space is often a non-breaking space or a narrow no-break space, which look identical on screen but are different characters. Paste such an amount into a spreadsheet and the cell is usually treated as text.

Choosing Space as the Grouping separator tells the normalizer to accept the ordinary space, the non-breaking space, the narrow no-break space and the thin space between digit groups. It applies only to the column you choose, so spaces inside descriptions and names are left alone.

Converting 1 234,50

The page example uses Decimal separator , and Grouping separator SPACE with the source value 1 234,50. The result is 1234.50: the group space is removed, the comma becomes the decimal point and both fraction digits stay.

The grouping still has to be regular. Two spaces between groups, as in 1 234,50, or a group of the wrong length, as in 12 34,50, is held for review with its original text, because those values could be two numbers that ran together.

The non-breaking variants are treated as spaces only inside the selected column, and the converted amount contains no spaces at all, so the result can go straight into the decimal totals checker.

Setting up the normalizer

• Paste the table into Table text. Make sure the Delimiter is not a space-like character; space-grouped exports usually use semicolons or tabs between fields.
• Tick First row contains column names if the table has a header.
• Choose the amount column in Number column.
• Set Decimal separator to , and Grouping separator to Space, then press Calculate.
• Read Values left for review and look each held value up in the source.

Space-related traps

• Using a space as a field separator anywhere in the text. The normalizer can only fix digits inside one cell; it cannot rejoin an amount that was split into two fields.
• Selecting Space grouping for a column that contains text such as 12 boxes. Those values are held, not converted, but they add noise to the review count.
• Expecting other columns to be cleaned. Cells outside the selected column keep their spaces exactly.
• In the Tablora app, the XLSX export accepts space grouping in recognized number columns, and it keeps a value as text when the spaces do not form groups of three. That protects you from cells that a photo reading ran together, such as 5 20 8, but compare such cells with the page before export.

Original synthetic example

Source value

1 234,50

Decimal separator

,

Grouping separator

SPACE

Expected outcome

Normalized amount: 1234.50

Tools

• numeric-normalizer