Display empty cells
 

Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help. Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi,
If you are trying to have the text wrap in the cell:
- select the cells (or all cells)
- menu format Cell , on one of the tabs check/uncheck the 'wrap' checkbox.
--
Regards,
Sébastien


"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help. Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Sounds like your simple solution would be to use Autofilter to just show
those rows with blanks in a given column. From the menubar: Data; Filter,
Autofilter -- toggles drop-box arrows to your column titles. Click the
column to filter and choose Blanks to only show those rows with blank cells
in that column. Repeat menubar to remove filter.
Suggest adding a toolbar button assigned to the following macro if you do
frequently.

Sub auto_filter()
Cells.AutoFilter 'toggles auto-filter on/off
Range("A1").Select 'optional; simply ensures cursor at cell A1
End Sub

"botany_girl" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank
cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as
important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in
the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with
no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help.
Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi,
Thanks for your reply! I've tried using text-wrap in the cells, but that
just increases the height of the cell, which makes the sheet huge when there
is a paragraph-sized entry in each cell. Any ideas on how to hide the extra
text?

Thanks!

"sebastienm" wrote:

Hi,
If you are trying to have the text wrap in the cell:
- select the cells (or all cells)
- menu format Cell , on one of the tabs check/uncheck the 'wrap' checkbox.
--
Regards,
Sébastien


"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help. Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Thanks for your reply! I tried using Autofilter to show the blanks, but it
omits the entries that have something in the column I filter...and we need to
see all of the entries at one time (the sheets are generally used for
information requests about certain species). The problem is that each row
represents a separate museum specimen, with collection locality data,
associated species, GPS coordinates, etc...and we want to see all entries at
one time. Any ideas?

Thanks!

"Jef Gorbach" wrote:

Sounds like your simple solution would be to use Autofilter to just show
those rows with blanks in a given column. From the menubar: Data; Filter,
Autofilter -- toggles drop-box arrows to your column titles. Click the
column to filter and choose Blanks to only show those rows with blank cells
in that column. Repeat menubar to remove filter.
Suggest adding a toolbar button assigned to the following macro if you do
frequently.

Sub auto_filter()
Cells.AutoFilter 'toggles auto-filter on/off
Range("A1").Select 'optional; simply ensures cursor at cell A1
End Sub

"botany_girl" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank
cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as
important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in
the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with
no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help.
Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

1. With 'Wrap' on, you can still resize the row size so that only the
begining of the text displays:
- select all data rows, and resize them at once, that is it won't
re-adjust automatically anymore.
-the cell may now display the end of the text instead of the begining. If
this is the case, in formatcell, tab alignment, choose Vertical: Top

2. Another way (if you don't want to use Wrap) woould be to add a 'dummy'
column right after the column containing the lengthy text. Enter a space or
an empty string in the whole column. Resize the dummy column to very small.

--
Regards,
Sébastien


"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,
Thanks for your reply! I've tried using text-wrap in the cells, but that
just increases the height of the cell, which makes the sheet huge when there
is a paragraph-sized entry in each cell. Any ideas on how to hide the extra
text?

Thanks!

"sebastienm" wrote:

Hi,
If you are trying to have the text wrap in the cell:
- select the cells (or all cells)
- menu format Cell , on one of the tabs check/uncheck the 'wrap' checkbox.
--
Regards,
Sébastien


"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help. Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Wonderful! Your #1 solution completely solved the problem. Thanks so much!

"sebastienm" wrote:

1. With 'Wrap' on, you can still resize the row size so that only the
begining of the text displays:
- select all data rows, and resize them at once, that is it won't
re-adjust automatically anymore.
-the cell may now display the end of the text instead of the begining. If
this is the case, in formatcell, tab alignment, choose Vertical: Top

2. Another way (if you don't want to use Wrap) woould be to add a 'dummy'
column right after the column containing the lengthy text. Enter a space or
an empty string in the whole column. Resize the dummy column to very small.

--
Regards,
Sébastien


"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,
Thanks for your reply! I've tried using text-wrap in the cells, but that
just increases the height of the cell, which makes the sheet huge when there
is a paragraph-sized entry in each cell. Any ideas on how to hide the extra
text?

Thanks!

"sebastienm" wrote:

Hi,
If you are trying to have the text wrap in the cell:
- select the cells (or all cells)
- menu format Cell , on one of the tabs check/uncheck the 'wrap' checkbox.
--
Regards,
Sébastien


"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help. Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

You might try wrapping the cells, and then resetting the row heighth to 12.75
1. Select all the cells
2. Format the cells t Wrap
3. Select all the rows, right click, select "Row Height", Set to 12.75.
Hope that helps!

"botany_girl" wrote:

Hi,

I have a rather vexing, though small, problem with Excel. I'm creating
worksheets that deal with museum specimens, and the cells in these sheets
tend to contain either a lot of information or none at all.
My problem: I want to be able to see the blank cells when I'm viewing the
sheet, and the cells with text in them automatically obscure the blank cells.
In my case, being able to see which cells are blank is almost as important
as seeing the cells containing data. (I know that putting a "space" in the
cell will cause it to display a blank cell, but we don't want to enter a
space in all of the blank cells--there are too many of them.)
Is there any solution to this? I've tried searching MS Office Help, with no
results, and all of my manipulations of cell/sheet settings don't help. Any
assistance will be much appreciated!

Thanks!