Check column for special characters and flag the rows that have them

[Deano478]

Hi Guys,

I'm currently having a bit of an issue that you may be able to help me with. I have sample data like so and what I need to do is identify the rows where special characters are present I have tired various approaches and had no luck yet:

Name

Test Company 1 LLP – Limited

Test Company 2 â$“ 200 Limited

Test Company 3 â'£ Limited

Test Company 4

Test Company 5

Test Company 6

The output would look something like this:

Name	Flag
Test Company 1 LLP – Limited	1
Test Company 2 â$“ 200 Limited	1
Test Company 3 â'£ Limited	1
Test Company 4	0
Test Company 5	0
Test Company 6	0

Thanks to anyone who can have a look in advance

[binuacs · Accepted solution]

@Deano478 One way of doing this

[Deano478]

@binuacs I had no clue there was even a function that did this wow ahah I was really over engineering it lol many thanks to you 😀

[OllieClarke · Accepted solution]

@Deano478 it depends on what you mean by special characters

@binuacs's solution will flag anything outside ASCII codes 32-126 (you can see exactly what that equates to here) But if you're just looking to keep letters, numbers and spaces then you can edit the regex to be

RegEx_CountMatches([Field],'[^\l\d ]')>0

 
With RegEx you need to be very specific in your demands as it is a very precise tool

Ollie

[caltang]

Learned something new, thanks @binuacs and @OllieClarke !