Excel question

Life Technology
1

I have one massive database and I want to select all the empty rows at once without CTRL+clicking each one (as there are several thousand of them). Anyone know how to do it? :help:

Thanks all

Taffy

2

Select the whole sheet, then do a “Data - Sort” and pick a column. This should group all of the empty rows at the top. (I think :slight_smile:)

3

IF (and only if) all the rows with information have something in column A (for example), then try this…

Click on the A (to higlight the entire A column).
Edit > Go To.
Hit “Special”.
Click “blanks”, then OK.
All cells in column A with no content will be highlighted.
Right-click on one of them and choose “Delete”, then “entire row”.

Does that help?

4

Yeah, I thought about this straight off but what I neglected to mention in my original post is that I need to preserve the original order of the info. Actually, I’ve just figured a way around that - inventing a column A that is sequentially numbered and using that to reconfigure the order once the blanks have been eliminated. Problem is, as IrishStu mentioned:

…well, unfortunately the entries appear at unpredictable cell numbers within the rows and I only want to delete those that have content whatsoever.

However, your posts were very helpful in getting to me to think of new ways around the problem - I’ve got a work-around. I selected all the blank cells (using irishstu’s method) in the whole sheet then deleted them, arranged the remaining cells so they were all in one column then rearranged to generally fit the system I want. Means I have to go through and manually correct a few entries, but it is just a few rather than thousands.

Thanks for the help! :bravo:

5

If your records are numbering in the thousands, you should abandon the spreadsheet and use an actual database.

6

There is also an “Autofilter” function in Excel.

  1. Highlight the columns that you want to search for blanks.
  2. From the Data menu, choose Filter → Autofilter
    Your top row will have dropdown menus now
  3. Click one of your drop-down menus and choose (Blanks) from the bottom of the menu.

I totally agree with you but ONLY IF Taffy intends to normalize the database. If Taffy is using Excel then this may not be the case and you’re just moving your problem from one system to another.