Trim and clean messy text

I downloaded a supplier list with inconsistent whitespace and hidden characters. Clean column B so each cell has no leading or trailing spaces, no repeated internal spaces, and remove non-printing characters. Put the cleaned result into column C and preserve the original values in B.

Before I send the supplier list to procurement, normalize the supplier names: trim all whitespace, remove line breaks and non-printing characters, collapse multiple spaces to one, and flag any entries that become empty after cleaning. Add a short summary at the top: number cleaned and number blanked.

My vendor match is breaking but the names look identical. I suspect non-breaking spaces or hidden control characters. I don't know which rows are affected. Should I run a blanket CLEAN and TRIM on the column, or first detect characters with CODE or LEN differences? Which approach is faster and safest when I have 3,000 rows and a tight deadline?

Imported supplier and contact lists repeatedly arrive with weird whitespace, line breaks and hidden characters and I keep troubleshooting matches. Propose a one-line import checklist and a lightweight sheet-side cleaning routine that I can reuse so future imports need near-zero manual cleaning. Include the minimal formula sequence to run automatically on paste.