|
While developing and editing your Excel worksheets, at some point or another you may want to get rid of stuff you've already put into cells. You can perform two kinds of deletions in a worksheet:
- Clearing a cell: Clearing just deletes or empties the cell's contents without removing the cell from the worksheet, which would alter the layout of the surrounding cells.
- Deleting a cell: Deleting gets rid of the whole kit and caboodle — cell structure along with all its contents and formatting. When you delete a cell, Excel has to shuffle the position of entries in the surrounding cells to plug up any gaps made by the demise.
Sounding the all clear!
To get rid of just the contents of a cell selection rather than delete the cells along with their contents, select the range of cells to be cleared, and simply press the Delete key.
If you want to get rid of more than just the contents of a cell selection, click the Clear button (the one with the eraser) in the Editing group on the Ribbon's Home tab and then click one of the following options on its drop-down menu:
- Clear All: Gets rid of all formatting and notes, as well as entries in the cell selection (Alt+HEA).
- Clear Formats: Deletes only the formatting from the cell selection without touching anything else (Alt+HEF).
- Clear Contents: Deletes only the entries in the cell selection just like pressing the Delete key (Alt+HEC).
- Clear Comments: Removes the notes in the cell selection but leaves everything else behind (Alt+HEM).
Get these cells outta here!
To delete the cell selection rather than just clear out its contents, select the cell range, and then click the drop-down button attached to the Delete command button in the Cells group of the Home tab and click Delete Cells on the drop-down menu (or press Alt+HDD). The Delete dialog box opens, showing options for filling in the gaps created when the cells currently selected are blotted out of existence with those left behind:
- Shift Cells Left: This default option moves entries from neighboring columns on the right to the left to fill in gaps created when you delete the cell selection by clicking OK or pressing Enter.
- Shift Cells Up: Select this to move entries up from neighboring rows below.
- Entire Row: Select this to remove all the rows in the current cell selection.
- Entire Columns: Select this to delete all the columns in the current cell selection.
 | If you know that you want to shift the remaining cells to the left after deleting the cells in the current selection, you can simply click the Delete command button on the Home tab of the Ribbon (this is the same thing as opening the Delete dialog box and then clicking OK when the default Shift Cells Left option button is selected). |
To delete an entire column or row from the worksheet, you can select the column or row on the workbook window frame, then right-click the selection and click Delete from the column's or row's shortcut menu.
 | You can also delete entire columns and rows selected in the worksheet by clicking the drop-down button attached to the Delete command button on the Ribbon's Home tab and then clicking the Delete Sheet Columns (Alt+HDC) or Delete Sheet Rows option (Alt+HDR) on the drop-down menu. |
 | Deleting entire columns and rows from a worksheet is risky business unless you are sure that the columns and rows in question contain nothing of value. Remember, when you delete an entire row from the worksheet, you delete all information from column A through XFD in that row (and you can see only a very few columns in this row). Likewise, when you delete an entire column from the worksheet, you delete all information from row 1 through 1,048,576 in that column. |
|
