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Allie94's avatar
Allie94
Copper Contributor
May 29, 2020

How to keep cells blank until data entered in

We have an Excel worksheet set up with formulas in place.  Right now, without any data entered, all the columns and rows show zero's.  We would like for the cells to remain blank until we enter data ...
excel
SergeiBaklan's avatar
SergeiBaklan
Diamond Contributor
May 29, 2020

Allie94 

One way is to apply custom number format like this to the cells

Another way, if zero are not required in entire sheet, you may disable this setting

Allie94's avatar
Allie94
Copper Contributor
May 29, 2020

SergeiBaklan 

Well, the tips do help with the 0's, but once I enter a # into the first column, then it carries that # all the way down the sheet.  We'd like to have the rows be blank until info is entered into each row.  It looks very "busy" to have the quantity going all the way down the page, and seems unneccesary.  If you know of any tips to help with that, I would really appreciate it.  I'm trying different settings, but not coming up with anything yet.  Thank you so much for the other tips!  I truly appreciate you taking the time to try to help me out. 

  • SergeiBaklan's avatar
    SergeiBaklan
    Diamond Contributor
    May 29, 2020

    Allie94 

    As variant you may modify your formulas a bit as

    =SUM(B14-D14+H14)
expand to
=SUM(B14-D14+H14)*D14*H14

=SUM(C14-E14+I14)
expand to
=SUM(C14-E14+I14)*E14*I14

    for all cells. With that formulas return zero (which is not shown) if not calculatable values have no values.

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