Tag: excel go to special

How to Enter\Fill Special Texts into Blank Cells in Excel

Sometimes we open an excel file and find there are some blank cells in the worksheet. We want to mark them with special texts so that readers can find them easily and ignore them. From this article, we will provide you two ways to enter special texts into blank cell to mark them different with the others. You can mark them by Go To Special command from toolbar, or you can also use IF function to pick them up.

Create a table like below. We can see there are some blank cells in the table.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 1

We want to mark these blank cells with special texts like ‘-’ or ‘/’ of ‘No’ to make them look more reasonable. There are two ways to implement as we mentioned above, so let’s start to learn the methods.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cell by Go To Special Command

Step 1: Select the range you want to find all blank cells out. You can just select the table from A1 to F4 in this case.

 Step 2: First we need to select all blank cells. Click on Edit->Find->Go To….

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 2

Notice that my Excel version is Excel 2016 for MAC, if you have other Excel versions on Windows OS, you may find Find & Select icon in Home toolbar, you can click on it to select Go To Special… directly.

Step 3: Follow above step, we click on Go To, then Go To window pops up, click on Special… button.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 3

Step 4: On Go To Special window, check on Blanks option, then click on OK button.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 4

You may find all blank cells are selected.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 5

Step 5: Don’t click on anywhere to release your selected blank cells. Just enter the text you like to mark blank cell different with the others, for example enter ‘-’, then click Ctrl + Enter on keyboard simultaneously to make all blank cells are copied with the same text.

Enter ‘-‘ in any blank cell.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 6

Click Ctrl + Enter on keyboard.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 7

Step 6: Click on anywhere on current sheet to release selection. Now all blank cells are marked with ‘-‘ properly.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cell by IF Function

Step 1: On current sheet, select a blank cell (except the blank cells in original table), then enter =IF(A1=””,”-“,A1). By this IF function user can copy the original table to another specific range with blank cells filled with the special text we entered in IF function. If A1 is not blank, the initial value in A1 will be saved in current cell, otherwise if A1 is blank cell, the special text will be recorded in the cell. Just fill the cells in a proper range till a new table is created.

Enter Special Texts into Blank Cells 8

Notice that the formula is =IF(A1=””,”-“,A1) not =IF(A1=” “,”-“,A1). If you entered =IF(A1=” “,”-“,A1) with space between double quote for A1, Excel will return 0 for blank cells and ignore the text you entered in formula.

Related Functions

  • Excel IF function
    The Excel IF function perform a logical test to return one value if the condition is TRUE and return another value if the condition is FALSE. The IF function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Logical Function.The syntax of the IF function is as below:= IF (condition, [true_value], [false_value])….

How to Delete All Textboxes in Excel

This post will guide you how to delete all textboxes from an active worksheet in Excel. How do I delete all textboxes without looping using an Excel VBA Macro. How to delete multiple text boxes in Excel.

Delete All Textboxes Using Go To Special Feature

Assuming that there are multiple text boxes in your current worksheet, and you need to delete all of them at once. How to do it. You can use the GO TO feature to achieve the result. Just do the following steps:

#1 go to HOME tab, click Find & Select command under Editing group. And select Go To Special from the popup menu list. And the Go To Special dialog will open.  Or you can click F5 key or Ctrl +G keys on your keyboard, and then click Special button in the Go To dialog.

delete all textboxes1

#2 Check Objects options in the Go To Special dialog box, click OK button.  And it will select all objects in the current worksheet.

delete all textboxes2

delete all textboxes3

#3 then you can press Delete key or Backspace key to delete all selected text boxes.

Delete All Textboxes Using VBA Macro

You can also use an Excel VBA Macro to achieve the same result of deleting all textboxes or objects in your current worksheet. Here are the steps:

#1 open your excel workbook and then click on “Visual Basic” command under DEVELOPER Tab, or just press “ALT+F11” shortcut.

Get the position of the nth using excel vba1

#2 then the “Visual Basic Editor” window will appear.

#3 click “Insert” ->”Module” to create a new module.

convert column number to letter3

#4 paste the below VBA code  into the code window. Then clicking “Save” button.

Sub DeleteAllTextBoxes()
    ActiveSheet.Shapes.SelectAll
    Selection.Delete
End Sub

delete all textboxes4

#5 back to the current worksheet, then run the above excel macro. Click Run button.

delete all textboxes5

You would notice that all text boxes are removed from your current worksheet.