Is there a way to hide a cell without changing the font color?

**gryffin13** · 05-26-2011, 02:10 PM

For various reasons I need to be able to hide certain cells, but I cannot hide it by changing the font color to the background because the background color is not consistent. To go through and select the background color would be just as time consuming as individually deleting the contents of the cell.

One of the reasons I am doing this might be able to be solved in a different way:
I am summing the percent complete in a column so it gradually gets closer to 100%. For many rows though it reaches 100% before the end, so I have many consecutive cells showing 100%. I would like to only show the first time it reaches 100% and then not show anything after that.

Thanks for the help.

I should also note that if there is a way in conditional formatting to choose "background color" rather than selecting the color that I know the background is, that would be acceptable, but I do not know of how to do this if it is possible.

**tigeravatar** · 05-26-2011, 02:24 PM

gryffin13,

I'm having a hard time picturing what your sheet looks like and what formulas you use. Can you upload a sample workbook so we can better help you?

~tigeravatar

**stanleydgromjr** · 05-26-2011, 02:37 PM

gryffin13,

Try:

Click on the cell where you want to hide the cell's contents.
Right mouse click, click on Format cells...
Click on the Number tab
In the Category: box
Click on Custom
In the box below Type:
Enter three ;;; characters
And click on the OK button.
Click on another cell.

You will only see the information in the cell if you click in the cell.

**gryffin13** · 05-26-2011, 02:43 PM

ok I've attached a .jpg of an example of what the second part looks like. As you can see there are lots of cells in a row reading 100%. Once it reaches 100% for the row, I would just like it to be blank/empty

it's a little hard to read since it's a snipet, but the rows are summing cumulative percents from left to right. So once it reaches 100% the rest will always be 100% since it just keeps adding to what's already there. Each row is effectively independent.

**gryffin13** · 05-26-2011, 02:46 PM

Stanley,
Thanks for the info, but I don't want to have to do it by hand. I want for instance to be able to highlight a row and conditionally format the whole row so that for example if the value is >99.5% it will hide it. Now if it were all white background I could use those settings and change all of those cells to white font, but with different colored backgrounds they will show up.

**tigeravatar** · 05-26-2011, 03:13 PM

gryffin13,

Highlight the area you want to conditionally format (from the image you provided it looks like the data you want to conditionally format starts on cell A2). Then put the following formula as the format condition:
=COUNTIF($A2:A2,1)>IF(A2=1,1,0)

Set the format to Custom: ;;; (just like stanleydgromjr suggested, except in the conditional format and not the individual cell)

Attached is a sample file showing how it works.

Hope this helps,
~tigeravatar

**tigeravatar** · 05-26-2011, 03:15 PM

Edited my previous post because I put my test formula in and not the one that applies to your worksheet. just in case you missed the edit, here's the update to the formula:
=COUNTIF($A2:A2,1)>IF(A2=1,1,0)

~tigeravatar

**gryffin13** · 05-26-2011, 03:44 PM

Oh I understand now. That was silly of me. Thank you very much to both of you. Stanley, I'm sure that's what you were implying I just was being dense.