Trim, Lower, and Upper
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Trim, Lower, and Upper

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Trim, Lower, and Upper

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Formula: Trim(), Lower(), and Upper()
Category: String
trim.svg
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Trim()
Trims extra spaces before and after text
It’s kind of like saying...
Hey Coda, I have extra spaces before and after my text. Will you get rid of them?
stairs-down.svg
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Lower()
Converts your text values to lower case
Or put another way...
Hey Coda, at least some of my text is upper case. Will change it to all lower case?
stairs-up.svg
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Upper()
Converts your text values to lower case
Or put another way...
Hey Coda, at least some of my text is lower case. Will change it to all upper case?

All three formulas use the same, single parameter.
text-color (7).svg
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Text

Trim(Text)

This is the text you want to trim or convert to lower/upper case.


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How Do They Work?

Trim(), Lower() , and Upper() are simple formulas to understand, so this section will be brief. But don’t skip the activities! These formulas are an absolute!
Original Sentence
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Woah! Watch out for the rogue asteroid. It may take down your ship.
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This sentence is
75
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characters long
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Trim()
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Whats it doing?
Trim() is simply taking the original sentence and taking the spaces off the front and back of the sentence. Notice how the character count changes when the Trim button above is pressed.
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Lower()
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Whats it doing?
Lower() is simply taking the original sentence and making every character in the sentence a lower-case letter

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Upper()
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Whats it doing?
Trim() is simply taking the original sentence and making every space an upper-case character
Modified Sentence:
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[ ]
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This sentence is
0
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characters long

Why Are They Important?

Trim(), Lower(), and Upper() are absolute must-haves in your Coda tool-belt. Without them you’ll find bug after bug in your formulas and tables.
As an exercise, look at the tables below. Why do you think the Total Votes column below in yellow only has a total of 4 votes? Click into the column to view its formula, or see it to the right.
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image.png
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6 People Voted
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4
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total votes have been counted
Class choices for favorite animal
1
2
3
4
5
6
Animal
Dog
Dog
Cat
Cat
Dog
Cat
There are no rows in this table
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Final tally of votes
1
2
Image
Name
Total Votes
The Wrong Way
Dog
2
3
Cat
2
3
There are no rows in this table
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From first glance, the formula is sound! It should work. But double click into the first two dog columns (the columns in blue) and pay attention to where your cursor lands.
If you pay attention closely you will notice that the first Dog value is only three characters long, but the 2nd Dog value is actually 4 characters long and includes an extra space at the end. These spaces will actually mess up your filter formulas. This is just one way to validate your data and ensure your filters work!
But wait! Theres more - uncollapse the headers below to keep your docs running smooth, fast, and accurate.

How to fix your filters: The wrong way

Filters (Filter()) are the number one culprit when it comes to a decrease in doc-performance.
Click into the wrong way column below to see how you should not write your formulas
1
2
Image
Name
The Wrong Way
Dog
3
Cat
3
There are no rows in this table
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Writing calculations or formulas inside your Filter() formulas is the wrong way - as much as you can, try to avoid it at all costs. Always compare values to values.
Now that you have learned the wrong way, go ahead and look into the right way.

How to fix your filters: The right way

Instead of using Trim() and Lower() inside of the filter formula itself, it is much faster (for your docs performance) to create secondary helper columns that trim/lower the values and then compare those columns within your filter formula
See the Animal Trimmed column below, and finally, click into the green Right Way column below to see how the formula is written.
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2
3
4
5
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Animal
Animal Helper
Dog
dog
Dog
dog
Cat
cat
Cat
cat
Dog
dog
Cat
cat
There are no rows in this table
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1
2
Image
Name
Animal Helper
The Right Way
Dog
dog
3
Cat
cat
3
There are no rows in this table
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Done
Count the number of names in a table that are the same
Done
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