Removes all diacritics from strings (e.g. names) in a Google spreadsheet

remove-diacritics-google-sheet

=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"ö","o"),"ü","u"),"ó","o"),"ő","o"),"ú","u"),"é","e"),"á","a"),"ű","u"),"í","i"),"Ö","O"),"Ü","U"),"Ó","O"),"Ő","O"),"Ú","U"),"É","E"),"Á","A"),"Ű","U"),"Í","I")

@NoSubstitute, I believe you talk about removeDiacritics() function.

The reason why it does not work is the regex defined on L44. It contains a list of characters that should not be replaced. It contains \s which matches [ \t\r\n\f] (aka whitespace characters), specifically a space, a tab, a carriage return, a line feed, or a form feed (src).

Also it contains a mistake: ,-. matches any character between a comma and a full stop / dot. There are no characters between these two, thus it matches only , or ., however, I wanted to also match -. A hyphen (when matched literally) should always go to the end of the list.

I have updated the script in my GitLab repository, however, I moved it to a new one and (as the function is a simple JS function without any dependency on Google APIs) I moved it to js/ folder.

I think I want to keep \s without replacing it. Now, when you copy the updated function, all you need to do is:

1. append ' ': '-' (as you did) to replacements (before L34);
2. comment out (prepend // ) L41.

Anyway, I updated the function in gSheets script, however, as I didn’t remove \s from charsToKeep, it won’t work for your case as is.