In Excel, you can use various formulas to calculate data quickly and accurately. Sometimes, however, you may just need the value of the cell and not the formula needed to get it. That way, you can change the values of other connected cells without worrying about your cell changing. In this tutorial, I will show you how to remove formulas in Excel and keep the values.
Removing the formula and keeping the data
Starting off, you should have a dataset similar to the one shown below. I will use a toy shop’s sales as an example.
In this example, I have used a formula to calculate the difference between yesterday’s and today’s sales. Now, I want to use that value as a number and not as a formula. To do that, first select the cells you want to convert:
Then, right-click the selected area and copy the cells:
Select the first cell, right-click on it and select the ’Paste Special’ option:
You will have the following menu open:
In that menu, select ‘Values’ and click OK.
Voila! The cells are now filled with the values and not the formulas and you can play around with the previously connected cells without them changing
Keyboard Shortcuts
If you prefer using keyboard shortcuts instead, you can use the following combinations:
Ctrl + C – copy the cells
Alt + E + S + V + Enter – paste them as values
Removing the formula and keeping the data
If you don’t wish to keep the data and just want to remove the data, you select the cells and either and use the ‘Delete’ key on your keyboard or right-click the selected area and select the ‘Clear Contents’ option.
Conclusion
With the above steps, we have successfully removed the formula from the cells whilst keeping their values. If you want to remove the data too, just select the wanted cells and press the ‘Delete’ key.
