How to Delete Conditional Formatted Cells in Excel
Excel is a powerful tool for organizing and analyzing data, and one of its many features is conditional formatting. This feature allows you to automatically format cells based on specific criteria. However, there may come a time when you need to delete conditional formatting from cells in your workbook. In this article, we will guide you through the steps on how to delete conditional formatted cells in Excel.
Understanding Conditional Formatting
Before we dive into the deletion process, it’s essential to understand what conditional formatting is. Conditional formatting is a feature in Excel that highlights cells based on the values they contain. You can set rules to format cells when they meet certain criteria, such as values that are above or below a certain threshold, or when they contain specific text or dates.
Deleting Conditional Formatting from Cells
Now that you have a basic understanding of conditional formatting, let’s go through the steps to delete it from your Excel workbook.
1. Open your Excel workbook and navigate to the worksheet containing the conditional formatting you want to delete.
2. Select the cell or range of cells that have conditional formatting applied to them. To select multiple cells, click and drag your mouse over the desired range.
3. Once you have selected the cells, right-click on any of the selected cells and choose “Conditional Formatting” from the context menu. This will open the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager.
4. In the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager, you will see a list of rules applied to the selected cells. To delete a specific rule, click on the rule you want to remove and then click the “Delete Rule” button.
5. If you want to delete all conditional formatting rules from the selected cells, click the “Delete Rule” button at the bottom of the Rules Manager. This will remove all rules and revert the cells to their original formatting.
6. After deleting the rules, click “OK” to close the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager.
7. You can now see that the conditional formatting has been removed from the selected cells.
Removing Conditional Formatting from Multiple Cells
If you want to remove conditional formatting from multiple cells that are not contiguous, you can follow these steps:
1. Open your Excel workbook and navigate to the worksheet containing the cells with conditional formatting.
2. Click on the “Home” tab in the Excel ribbon.
3. In the “Styles” group, click on the “Conditional Formatting” button and select “Clear Rules.”
4. Choose “Clear Rules from Selected Cells” from the drop-down menu. This will remove conditional formatting from the selected cells.
5. Alternatively, you can click on “Clear Rules from Entire Workbook” to remove conditional formatting from all cells in the workbook.
Conclusion
Deleting conditional formatted cells in Excel is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few steps. By understanding the basics of conditional formatting and following the steps outlined in this article, you can easily remove formatting rules from your workbook and revert cells to their original state.
