Ghost Scrub
Upload a dataset to begin
Supported formats: .csv,.xlsx,.xls,.xlsm,.xlsb,.tsv
Sign in for free for unlimited files, no payment required.
About Ghost Scrub
Removes zero-width spaces and non-breaking spaces that break code.
Ghost Scrub scans your file for characters that render as blank but aren't, zero-width spaces (U+200B), non-breaking spaces (U+00A0), and other invisible Unicode marks that often sneak in from copy-pasted web content or exports from certain CMS and PDF tools.
These characters look identical to a normal space in a spreadsheet but break exact-match filters, VLOOKUPs, regex, and API calls downstream. The tool strips them out while leaving your visible text untouched.
Category: Cleaning & PreparationCommon Use Cases
- Fixing lookup failures where two values look identical but a VLOOKUP or JOIN won't match them
- Cleaning text copy-pasted from web pages or PDFs before importing into a database
- Sanitizing form-submitted data before it's used as a matching key in another system
Key Features
- Detects zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces, and other invisible Unicode characters
- Strips BOM markers left over from certain export tools
- Leaves visible text and formatting untouched
- Works across every column and cell in the file
Pair Ghost Scrub with Super Fix when a file has both encoding damage and invisible characters, or with Trim & Sanitize afterward to also clear empty rows and normal whitespace.
Frequently Asked Questions
Invisible characters like zero-width spaces and non-breaking spaces that look like normal whitespace but break string comparisons, regex matches, and code that parses your CSV.
A classic symptom is a value that looks identical to another in a spreadsheet but fails an exact-match filter or lookup, that's usually a hidden character.
Essential for developers and data engineers debugging why an exact-match key comparison silently fails.
Read the related guide →