Did you know that you can hide data in individual cells or ranges of cells in Excel without changing your spreadsheet’s content or structure? It’s surprising that Microsoft Excel doesn’t have a pre-made tool for hiding data in visible cells, as this functionality has many uses.
For example, this heat map illustrates the positions from which a team has scored this season’s goals. The varying color tones make the heat map clear without the need to display the corresponding numbers.
Likewise, the overall scores in this table are calculated using numbers that don’t hold any numerical value, other than for comparative purposes. Since the data bars tell the whole story, the numbers in the final column only serve to confuse the reader.
In a final example, when I print the employee information sheet, I want to hide the salary without deleting the figure from my worksheet.
If you find yourself in the same situation, where you want to hide data without removing it altogether or changing your spreadsheet’s structure, follow these steps.
First, select the cells in question, and click the “Number Format” dialog box icon in the bottom-right corner of the Number group in the Home tab on the ribbon.
Next, click “Custom” in the left-hand menu, and type ;;; (three semicolons) into the Type field.
When you click “OK,” the numbers in the selected cells will disappear, even though the data is still there. Here are my three examples, all showing the data hidden from the relevant parts of the spreadsheets.
To reverse this action and uncover the numbers you’ve hidden, click the “Number Format” dialog box icon in the bottom-right corner of the Number group once again, but this time, select “General,” and click “OK.”
In other scenarios, it might be preferable to hide single or groups of columns from view altogether in Excel, and then unhide them when you’re ready to display them again. For example, you can hide less important columns to aid data simplification, or temporarily remove columns between two other columns you want to compare more closely.
