How to Clear Formatting in Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel offers plenty of styling options to customize your spreadsheet’s appearance. If you ever need to remove your formatting, however, it’s easy to do so for both select cells and your entire worksheet. We’ll show you how.

Note: Clearing formatting only removes the style of your text; your actual text is retained.

RELATED: How to Clear Formatting in a Microsoft Word Document

How to Clear Formatting for Select Cells in Excel

Excel offers the option to remove formatting from a single or multiple select cells. This way you can clear a cell’s formatting without affecting any other cells.

To do so, first, open your spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel.

In the spreadsheet, select the cell or cells from which you want to remove formatting.

Tip: To clear formatting in a specific row or column, select that row or column instead of individual cells.

While your cells are selected, in Excel’s ribbon at the top, click the “Home” tab.

On the “Home” tab, in the “Editing” section, click the “Clear” option.

From the “Clear” menu, select “Clear Formats.”

And Excel will remove all formatting from your selected cells.

You’re all set.

If hyperlinks in your cells are giving you grief, learn how to remove hyperlinks or disable them entirely in Excel.

Clear Formatting for All Cells in Excel

You can remove formatting from your entire worksheet at once. To do so, first, launch your spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel.

On the spreadsheet screen, press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac) to select your entire worksheet.

While your worksheet is selected, in Excel’s ribbon at the top, click the “Home” tab.

In the “Home” tab, from the “Editing” section, select the “Clear” option.

In the “Clear” menu, click “Clear Formats.”

And all your formatting is gone from your current worksheet.

That’s it.

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On a related note, did you know you can use conditional formatting to find duplicate data in Excel?

RELATED: How to Use Conditional Formatting to Find Duplicate Data in Excel