What do you do when you have to copy a range of cells in Excel and paste it somewhere else? In most cases, the below three steps get the work done: But what if you have some hidden cells in the dataset? Then – these above three steps are not enough. Let me show you what happens when you try to copy cells that have hidden rows/columns in it. Suppose you have a dataset as shown below:
Note that there are hidden rows in this dataset (look at the row numbers). Now see what happens when I try to copy these cells and paste it somewhere else.
In the above example, I selected the visible cells, but when I paste these cells into another location, it copied the visible as well as the hidden cells. The workaround to this is to make sure that Excel only selects the visible cells. Then I can copy and paste these visible cells only. In this tutorial, I will show you three ways to select visible cells only in Excel.
Select Visible Cells using a Keyboard Shortcut
The easiest way to select visible cells in Excel is by using the following keyboard shortcut:
For windows: ALT + ; (hold the ALT key and then press the semicolon key) For Mac: Cmd+Shift+Z
Here is a screencast where I select only the visible cells, copy the visible cells (notice the marching ants around selection), and paste these:
Select Visible Cells using Go To Special Dialog Box
While using the keyboard shortcut is the fastest way to select visible cells, if you don’t want to use the keyboard or don’t remember the shortcut, there is another way. You can use the ‘Go To Special’ dialog box to select visible cells in a dataset. Here are the steps: This would select all the visible cells in the dataset.
Select Visible Cells using a QAT Command
Another great way to select visible cells in Excel is to add a command to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). Once added, you can simply click this command in the QAT, and it will select visible cells in the dataset. Here are the steps to add ‘Select Visible Cells’ command to the QAT: The above steps would add the ‘Select Visible Cells’ command to the QAT.
Now you when you select a dataset and click on this command in the QAT, it will select visible cells only.
How to Deselect Cells in Excel How to Select Non-adjacent cells in Excel? Number Rows in Excel How to Hide a Worksheet in Excel (that can’t be unhidden). How to Select Every Third Row in Excel (or select every Nth Row). Highlight EVERY Other ROW in Excel (using Conditional Formatting). How to Quickly Select Blank Cells in Excel.
Narendra And happy new year to all.
