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

By: Ashish Patel

Ashish Patel — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:04:16 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for the great tip.. I have one problem though.. you can still see the value if when you enter in the cell in the formula bar.
This is also the case when you protect a worksheet and do not allow selection of locked cells. You can still navigate to the locked cell via the formula bar. Anyway around this ?

Ashish

By: Chandoo

Chandoo — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:26:39 +0000

@San, are you sure you have typed three ;;; as shown in the pic above? It should accept the format as is. Let me know if you have typed something else.

By: San

San — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:38:30 +0000

Hi Chandoo… I tried this, but i am getting a error mesage saying “Microsoft Office Excel cannot use the number format you typed. Try using one of the built-in formats. For more information about custom number formats, click Help”.

Could you please tell me what is wrong that i have done???

By: savithri.v

savithri.v — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:39:19 +0000

“This formatting code only blanks out the cell contents from being seen. They contents are still there and accessible for formulas, charts as such”
Felt like sharing with you this…
Recently, I was witness to a presentation which just had lines all over in the graph, with no clue as to whether the numbers represented %s or values. It seems that the presenter had inadvertently missed to format the value axis in the graph to display the labels (which had source data formatted “;;;”)
savithri

By: Best month ever [blogging updates] | Pointy Haired Dilbert: Charting & Excel Tips - Chandoo.org

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:47:08 +0000

[...] How to hide a cell’s contents in Excel [...]

By: derek

derek — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:26:40 +0000

This method highlights the big weakness of Excel’s custom number formatting for me: its failure to properly handle logicals and errors. Try the following format on a range of types:

“positive”;”negative”;”zero”;”text”

You’ll find that numbers are shown using the “positive etc.” labels, (right aligned); text uses the “text” label, left aligned, naturally; errors do not respond to formatting; and logicals are treated with the “text” label, only center aligned. So I’m stuck with using conditional formatting to paint FALSE values white in my spreadsheets (conditional formatting does not allow you to format numbers, only some text and cell attributes)

However, at least I can create an expression that lets me switch FALSE values from invisible to bright red over the whole sheet, for diagnostic purposes, by typing “Y” in a sngle cell

By: Chandoo

Chandoo — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:59:54 +0000

@Gerald.. you are right… the three sections of the custom format code can be used to define some minimal conditional formatting. For eg. a code like [<500][red]0;[<1000][blue]0;[green]0; would display red, blue and green text based on the value. I have also described an example of it here: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/01/29/colors-in-excel-chart-labels-trick/

By: Gerald Higgins

Gerald Higgins — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:36:55 +0000

You can’t do it within normal conditional formating.

But you can use some of the conditional functions within custom formats.
For example
[<500]0;;
will display numbers smaller than 500. Anything more than 500 will not display. I worked this out from some custom format instructions on John Peltier’s site.

By: Chandoo

Chandoo — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:50:11 +0000

@Bob.. in 2007 you can do this, but in earlier versions of excel this is not allowed in conditional formatting.

@Michael Pierce: That is a good one.. keeping the alignment right..

@Tony: that is a fun way to use this…

By: Bob Gannon

Bob Gannon — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:45:01 +0000

Great tip. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to do this with conditional formatting. Too bad. You can do white text.