Deleting Alternating Blank Rows

Learn Excel from MrExcel, Podcast Episode 2153: Deleting Blank Columns.

Hey. I was in Green Bay, Wisconsin, doing a seminar there and the question came up about these tiny blank columns between the columns and is there fast way to get rid of those, and, well, yeah, sure. I mean, the way that I always talk about doing this is to delete the first one however you want. I use ALT+E, D, C, OK, but then, from there, it’s easy. Just move to the next blank column. Press F4. F4 is the world's greatest redo -- repeats the last command you did -- and now it's just simple F4, RIGHT ARROW, F4, RIGHT ARROW, F4.

You know, hey, if you have forty of those, that's going to be a hassle to do that, and, in the audience, was Carmella, said, oh hey, wait, no. There's a fast way to do that. Just choose the whole row. When you choose the whole row, and then we're going to use FIND & SELECT, GO TO SPECIAL. Now, I'm going to do this with keyboard shortcuts, so CONTROL+G for GO TO, ALT+S for Special, K for BLANKS. That chooses all of the blank cells in that row. Click OK. Alright, so, now, we've selected all those blanks. Now it's a simple matter to delete, so CONTROL – sign, press C for ENTIRE COLUMN, OK, and, bam, you're done. What an awesome trick.

Now, Carmella gave me a tip here. Make sure that you choose a row that everything's filled in. If you had something where there was data but something wasn't filled in, well then, that wouldn't work at all, but a great, clever, clever way to solve that problem.

Tips like that, in my book Power Excel With MrExel. Click the i on the top right-hand corner.

Today’s episode: QuickBooks loves to insert those tiny columns between the columns; to speed up the process of deleting them, delete the first column, then use F4 for a fast redo; but better, thanks to Carmella in Green Bay, select a row, go to SPECIAL, BLANKS, CONTROL – sign, choose C for ENTIRE COLUMN. Okay.

Hey. I want to thank you for stopping by. We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.