Are your blank cells acting weird?
Perhaps Excel is treating them like they’re not blank.
Or it’s giving you bizarre errors.
In this video, I explain what’s going on and how to fix it.
How to fix blank cells acting weird
If your blank cells are acting weird, it’s because Excel is seeing them as empty text strings instead of actual blank cells. These look identical to the user, but are treated differently by Excel.
There are three easy ways to fix this:
Option One
Highlight the cells that are causing problems, and press the delete button on your keyboard. (NOT the Delete icon on the home ribbon. That does something different.)
Option Two
If the blank cells acting weird are mixed in with other cells, use a filter to just show blank cells. Excel’s filters treat empty text strings as blank cells. Then highlight the cells that should be blank and press the delete button on your keyboard.
For options one and two, it’s okay if you also select normal blank cells. Pressing the delete button on your keyboard while highlighting actual blank cells doesn’t do anything, so this won’t cause any problems.
Again, make sure you’re pressing the delete button on your keyboard, not the Delete icon on the home ribbon. Clicking the Delete icon on the home ribbon will break your spreadsheet.
Option Three
Highlight the column containing the blank cells acting weird.
Then go to the Data ribbon and select Text-to-columns.
Choose Delimited, but uncheck all the options for a Delimiter.
Choose General Column data format, and Finish.
That should fix the problem.
Want to learn more about Excel?
Check out our Courses and Consulting page for upcoming classes.
And please subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of any future courses, and get monthly tips on how Excel can make your life easier.
You can also submit questions to be answered in a future blog post or video, or book a free consultation to find out how we can save your business time and money with our done-for-you solutions.