MS Excel: hide a selection of data (not an entire row or column)?

[Panda Q]

I would like to hide a portion of cells without hiding the entire row or the
entire column in a single worksheet.

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

Can't be done. Rows and columns have a hidden property, but individual cells
do not. What you could do would be to use formatting or conditioanl
formatting to make the text colour the same as the background colour. The
value is still in the cell but it does not appear because of the colour.

 

[FSt1]

hi
excel can't do that.
you can hide entire rows or columns but not individual cells or groups of
cells.

Sorry
Regard
FSt1

 

[Panda Q]

Thanks everyone.

To make it clear for me, along the same lines, let me post an example.

In rows 1-15, if I have column A, B, and C, C is a total of A and B, and
there is additional information that I do not want to hide in rows after 16,
pretty much the only way to "hide" the information in column A and B for rows
1-15, is to format the font color to match the background color?

Because deleting that portion would mess up the total function, right? And
there's no method to hide only select cells (by shifting them left or up or
whatever), similar to if you deleted them?

Thanks everyone! You're response time was awesome!!

 

[FSt1]

hi
i think you're catching on. and your assessment is correnct.

Regards
FSt1

 

[blainekyle]

Ended up here looking for an answer to the same question. The advice of others here is good, but I also found that, in order to truly hide the data, such as one may wish to do if sharing a spreadsheet with another party who should not be privy, you should go a little further.

Here's the ticket:
1. Make cell contents and background same color. Rule of thumb can be white and white if you want it to look blank, or black and black for a 'redacted' look.
2. Under the 'Review' tab, utilise the 'Protect Sheet' function. In the resulting dialog, uncheck 'Select locked cells' and 'Select unlocked cells.'
3. Press 'OK' to commit.

The purpose of step two is to prevent the viewer from being able to select the cell to view its contents in the function field along top. If you don't wish to lock the entire sheet, just lock the ones you wish to hide. For advice on that, you should probably hit up Google, or start a new thread.