How to Hide a Cell’s Contents in Excel? [Quick Tip]

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Here is a very quick tip if you ever want to hide a cell’s contents in excel

Just use the custom cell formatting (more here) code ;;;

How? (see the screencast aside too)
Hide / Make Invisible a Cell's contents in Microsoft Excel - Quick Tip
1. Select the cell you want to hide

2. Hit CTRL+1 (or open format cells dialog from right click)

3. Go to Number tab, select “custom” as the type

4. Type the formatting code as “;;;” without double quotes

5. Press OK and your cell contents are invisible now

What is the use of doing this?

1. This might be handy when you are using conditional formatting to highlight / change cell colors

2. This might be handy when you need to calculate intermediate values, but dont want to display them. (But try to use Hide rows / hide columns feature if you can)

Remember: This formatting code only blanks out the cell contents from being seen. They contents are still there and accessible for formulas, charts as such.

Also know how to display colors in chart data labels using custom cell formatting codes

What is your favorite cell formatting trick?

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

7 Responses to “Extract data from PDF to Excel – Step by Step Tutorial”

  1. Jinesh Vasa says:

    Dear Chandoo,

    Thank you very much for this and it is very helpful.
    However, all the Credit Card Statements are now password protected.
    Please advise how can we have a workaround for that

  2. Sivakumar H says:

    Hello sir,
    How to check two names are present in the same column ?
    Thanks and Regards

  3. Ahmed Mallook says:

    Hi, Thank you for the great tip. One problem, when I click on get data >> from file, I don't see the PDF source option. How can I add it?
    I tried to add it from Quick Access toolbar >>> Data Tab, but again the PDF option is not listed there.
    I am using Office 365

  4. PP says:

    Hi, Thank you for your video. I see you used the composite table, but I when I load my pdf, it does not load any composite table. It has 20 tables and 4 pages for one bank statement. I have about 30 bank statements that I want to combine. Your video would work except that I can't get the composite table and each of the tables I do get or the pages does not have all the info. what to do?

  5. Jr. H says:

    Dear Chandoo,
    How do we select multiple amount of tables/pages in one PDF and repeat the same for rest of the PDF;s in the same folder and then extract that data only on power query.

    Thank you

  6. antonlagi says:

    Hi, Thank you for your video. I see you used the composite table, but I when I load my pdf, it does not load any composite table. It has 20 tables and 4 pages for one bank statement. I have about 30 bank statements that I want to combine. nice share

  7. One bank statement takes up 20 tables and four pages in this document. I need to consolidate roughly thirty different bank statements that I have. Your video would be useful if I could only get the composite table, which I can't for some reason, and each of the tables or pages that I can get is missing some information.

Leave a Reply