Jamie from Hampshire UK offers a better way for hiding data in cells. Rather than changing the font color to white, you can use this custom number format. Episode 919 shows you how.
This video is the podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
This video is the podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
Well, here we are, the last netcast of 2008.
Going to pass along a tip from Jamie.
Jamie's in the UK.
In a previous podcast, I talked about if you have some data to hide and you didn't want to actually hide the column, you could always change the font color to white and, basically, then it'll look like there's no data there.
You can still see it if you select the cell in the formula bar.
Now, Jamie said the obvious problem with this is if you make a selection that includes that data, you're going to see it in white also.
If someone goes through and changes the background color, then the data all of a sudden is going to appear.
So Jamie said a better way to go, is to select the cells that you want to hide, and we're going to go into Format Cells-- so that's, press Ctrl+1, press Ctrl+1-- and we're going to create a Custom Number format.
The Custom number format we're going to use is 3 semicolons-- so ;;;-- that basically says, "Well, that if the number is positive, negative, 0, or text, we're going to display nothing." And now you'll see that the data does not appear; it doesn't appear even when I've selected the data.
You can still see it by selecting it and looking up in the formula bar, but if someone changes the background color, the data still remains absolutely not visible.
Won't print, and so excellent tip.
Want to thank Jamie for sending that along, want to thank you for watching, want to wish you a great New Year and we'll see you again in 2009.
Well, here we are, the last netcast of 2008.
Going to pass along a tip from Jamie.
Jamie's in the UK.
In a previous podcast, I talked about if you have some data to hide and you didn't want to actually hide the column, you could always change the font color to white and, basically, then it'll look like there's no data there.
You can still see it if you select the cell in the formula bar.
Now, Jamie said the obvious problem with this is if you make a selection that includes that data, you're going to see it in white also.
If someone goes through and changes the background color, then the data all of a sudden is going to appear.
So Jamie said a better way to go, is to select the cells that you want to hide, and we're going to go into Format Cells-- so that's, press Ctrl+1, press Ctrl+1-- and we're going to create a Custom Number format.
The Custom number format we're going to use is 3 semicolons-- so ;;;-- that basically says, "Well, that if the number is positive, negative, 0, or text, we're going to display nothing." And now you'll see that the data does not appear; it doesn't appear even when I've selected the data.
You can still see it by selecting it and looking up in the formula bar, but if someone changes the background color, the data still remains absolutely not visible.
Won't print, and so excellent tip.
Want to thank Jamie for sending that along, want to thank you for watching, want to wish you a great New Year and we'll see you again in 2009.
