How to Automatically Delete Blank Cells to Organize Data

Delete Blanks LeadData doesn’t always import or paste into Excel as nicely as you want. Sometimes, all the information is there, but extra blanks and spaces are carried along with the data cells. At first glance, this looks like it could be a very tedious problem to solve… It could take ages to manually take them out, and sometimes the data order is sensitive, so it can’t be sorted (to bring all the blanks together). Fortunately, there is a way to select all the blanks in a selection simultaneously for deletion. Let’s walk through an example of how…

Examine the Data

Here is a typical import… We have Employee Names, their Roles, and their Hire Dates, but they are not in the proper columns…

Data Set

Select the Blank Cells

Let’s get them sorted out. Select the data range where there are blanks to remove.

Select Data

Press F5 and click Special in the Go To dialog that appears.

F5 Special

In the Go To Special dialog box, choose Blanks and click OK.

Blanks

The spreadsheet should now look like this, with only the blank cells selected.

Blank Selection

Right-click within one of the selected cells, and choose Delete in the drop-down menu that appears.

Delete Blanks

Excel will now ask which direction you want it to shift the cells that remain. In this example, choose Shift Cells Left and click OK.

Shift Cells Left

The result should be the beautifully organized data that you wanted all along!

Ordered Data