Line Through in Excel

What this does

Strikethrough draws a line through text while keeping the value in the cell. It is formatting, not deletion, so formulas, filters and copies still see the original value. You can apply it to a whole cell or, while editing, to only selected characters inside the cell. Most people learn this as a sequence of clicks and forget it by next week; learning it as a pattern instead is what lets you apply it to the next, slightly different version of the problem without starting from scratch. That is the difference this page is trying to make. The difference between a quick fix and a sheet you can trust is the extra minute you spend validating “line through in excel”. Start on a copy or a tiny sample, keep the affected cells visible, and compare the result with the tool above before you touch the real workbook. When this is a ribbon command, the selection matters more than the button: confirm the range, apply the command, then spot-check the output before saving. The point is a visual that makes the number obvious at a glance, but the practical win is that someone else can open the file and understand what happened without asking you.

A worked example

A task list has Done items in A2:A10. Select completed task names and press Ctrl+5 to strike them through. If a cell says Draft final, edit the cell, select only Draft, press Ctrl+1 and tick Strikethrough so only that word is crossed out. Strikethrough is best for visible workflow state: done tasks, superseded values, cancelled line items and review notes where the old text should remain visible. One habit worth forming early: name the cells that hold your inputs, so the formula reads in plain language instead of a string of cell addresses. A reviewer — or you in three months — can then follow the logic without decoding what B7 and D2 were supposed to mean, which is most of what makes a sheet maintainable.

In Google Sheets

If you are in Google Sheets rather than Excel, the good news is that the formula shown here is identical and the workflow barely changes — menus sit across the top instead of in a ribbon, and a few function names differ slightly, but anything you build here moves across with little or no rework. Nothing on this page is behind a login: the tool runs entirely in your browser, the formula is shown in full with one-click copy, and the steps work the same on Windows and Mac. That is the whole promise here — the exact answer, a way to prove it on your own numbers, and just enough context to make it stick. Treat “line through in excel” as a small building block rather than a chore. Once the inputs sit in their own cells and the formula reads from them, the same setup answers a dozen related questions with a tweak, and Excel keeps every dependent figure current as the data changes. The tool above is there so you can rehearse and verify before committing anything to a real workbook; the steps and worked example are there so the logic sticks. Get it right once and it stops costing you time — it starts saving it, every time the question comes back around.

Common mistakes

• Assuming strikethrough removes the value from formulas or totals.
• Applying it manually to large lists instead of using conditional formatting from a Done column.
• Expecting Ctrl+5 to work the same in every browser-based spreadsheet environment.
• Using strikethrough as the only status marker, which can be hard to scan or print.

Frequently asked questions