Deleting the contents of a cell in Excel/-
To delete the contents of a cell, just click the cell and press the Delete key. To delete more
than one cell, select all of the cells that you want to delete and then press Delete. Pressing
Delete removes the cell’s contents but doesn’t remove any formatting (such as bold, italic,
or a different number format) that you may have applied to the cell.
For more control over what gets deleted, you can choose Home ➪ Editing ➪ Clear. This com-
mand’s drop-down list has six choices.
Clear All – Clears everything from the cell—its contents, formatting, and cell comment (if
it has one).
Clear Formats – Clears only the formatting and leaves the value, text, or formula.
Clear Contents – Clears only the cell’s contents and leaves the formatting. This has the
same effect as pressing Delete.
Clear Comments – Clears the comment (if one exists) attached to the cell.
Clear Hyperlinks – Removes hyperlinks contained in the selected cells. The text and for-
matting remain, so the cell still looks like it has a hyperlink, but it no longer functions as
a hyperlink.
Remove Hyperlinks – Removes hyperlinks in the selected cells, including the cell
formatting.
Replacing the contents of a cell in Excel-
To replace the contents of a cell with something else, just activate the cell and type
your new entry, which replaces the previous contents. Any formatting applied to the cell
remains in place and is applied to the new content.
You can also replace cell contents by dragging and dropping or by copying and pasting data
from another cell. In both cases, the cell formatting will be replaced by the format of the
new data. To avoid pasting formatting, choose Home ➪ Clipboard ➪ Paste ➪ Values (V), or
Home ➪ Clipboard ➪ Paste ➪ Formulas (F).
Editing the contents of a cell in Excel-
If the cell contains only a few characters, replacing its contents by typing new data usually
is easiest. However, if the cell contains lengthy text or a complex formula and you need
to make only a slight modification, you probably want to edit the cell rather than re-enter
information.
When you want to edit the contents of a cell, you can use one of the following ways to
enter Edit mode:
- Double-click the cell to edit the cell contents directly in the cell.
- Select the cell and press F2 to edit the cell contents directly in the cell.
- Select the cell that you want to edit and then click inside the Formula bar to
edit the cell contents in the Formula bar.
You can use whichever method you prefer. Some people find editing directly in the cell
easier; others prefer to use the Formula bar to edit a cell.
All of these methods cause Excel to go into Edit mode. (The word Edit appears at the
left side of the status bar at the bottom of the window.) When Excel is in Edit mode, the
Formula bar enables two icons: Cancel (the X) and Enter (the check mark). Below Figure shows these two icons. Clicking the Cancel icon cancels editing without changing the cell’s contents. (Pressing Esc has the same effect.) Clicking the Enter icon completes the editing and
enters the modified contents into the cell. (Pressing Enter has the same effect, except that
clicking the Enter icon doesn’t change the active cell.)
When you begin editing a cell, the insertion point appears as a vertical bar, and you can
perform the following tasks:
- Add new characters at the location of the insertion point. Move the insertion
point by doing one of the following: - Using the navigation keys to move within the cell
- Pressing Home to move the insertion point to the beginning of the cell
- Pressing End to move the insertion point to the end of the cell
- Select multiple characters. Press Shift while you use the navigation keys.
- Select characters while you’re editing a cell. Use the mouse. Just click and drag
the mouse pointer over the characters that you want to select. - Delete a character to the left of the insertion point. The Backspace key deletes
the selected text or the character to the left of the insertion point if no characters
are selected. - Delete a character to the right of the insertion point. The Delete key also deletes
the selected text. If no text is selected, it deletes the character to the right of the
insertion point.