Clean and reformat a list before pasting into SAP

A colleague sends you a list on a single line, full of duplicates and odd separators. Or you get an SE16N export in bulk. Here's how to put it all back in shape with one shortcut, instead of tinkering by hand in Excel.

The problem

The data we receive is rarely in the right format for SAP: a list of references pasted on a single line, separated by commas, semicolons or spaces; duplicates; dates in the wrong format when you need YYYYMMDD; an SE16N export with vertical bars and separator lines. Each time, you go through Excel to clean it, and you lose time.

The idea: transformation "pipelines"

A pipeline is a chain of small rules applied to the clipboard, triggered by a shortcut. You chain the steps you need, and the clean result is ready to paste. Among the transformations useful in daily SAP work:

• Remove duplicates from a list.
• Split into a column a list written on a single line (one value per line).
• Extract numbers (codes, EANs) while ignoring junk text.
• Pad with zeros (see MATNR padding).
• Sort, prefix/suffix, wrap in quotes (handy for an SQL list), convert dates and numbers FR ↔ US.
• Clean an SE16N export (remove the bars and separator lines).

With MyToolKit

You compose your pipelines once, each bound to a shortcut. Then a raw list becomes a clean list in one move. A concrete example: receive a bulk list of EANs → extract numbers → remove duplicates → sort → one value per line, ready to paste into an SE16 multiple selection. Combined with OCR, it can even start from a screenshot.

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