In today’s post, we would be taking you through deleting blank rows in excel. At the end of the post, you should be able to quickly select and delete blank rows.
In our example for today, we would be reviewing the result of a questionnaire completed by 8 respondents. There are four questions in total and if an answer isn’t provided for any of the questions, then the respondent’s data is as good as useless which means it must be deleted from the data set.
Because the goal is to be swift with it, I would first take you through deleting blank rows of this data set with keyboard shortcuts, then we would go through the excel ribbon using our mouse or trackpad.
Steps to Deleting Blank Rows through Keyboard Shortcuts
Step 1: Highlight the range for your data set and press F5 key on your system. This should pop out a Go To box as seen below. Then click on Special to bring out another selection box.
Step 2: On executing Step 1 successfully, you should see a Go To Special box. click on Blanks and then click ok.
Step 3: The result of step 3 is that all blank cells would become highlighted. Now press CTRL + Minus (“Ctrl “+ “–“) keys simultaneously and select Rows in the resulting pop out box and click on OK.
Result: As mentioned in the Introduction to the example, we require complete sets only. Meaning that the information of any respondent with at least one question unanswered would have his/her row deleted.
We are left with 3 entries out of an initial 7 because 4 respondents left 1 or more questions unanswered.
Deleting Blank Rows Using Mouse / Trackpad
To delete rows using your mouse, simply follow the following steps:
Step 1: Highlight the range of your data set and navigate to the home tab >> Editing Group >> Find & Select.
Step 2: Click Go to Special
Step 3: Select Blank in the pop out and click on OK
Step 4: You should see all blank cells selected.
Step 5: Now navigate to the home tab, and in the cells group click on delete.
Step 6: Click delete sheet rows
Result:
