Editing and Clearing Cells

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Excel journey — lesson 8 of 42.

Nobody types everything right the first time, so let's learn to fix cells. The good news: nothing in the grid is permanent.

Replacing a value is the easiest fix: select the cell and just start typing. The new value completely replaces the old one the moment you press Enter. No need to erase anything first.

Clearing a cell means emptying it: select it and press the Delete key. The cell itself stays right where it is, cells never leave the grid, it just becomes empty again. Note that an empty cell and a cell containing 0 are different things: zero is a value; empty is nothing.

Two more moves worth knowing. Double-click a cell to edit inside it, handy for fixing a typo in a long label without retyping the whole thing. And if you start typing into a cell and change your mind, press Escape before Enter: the edit is thrown away and the old value stays untouched.

Try it yourself

This lesson doesn't include a code challenge.