Excel telling me my blank cells aren't blank

Question

So in excel I'm trying to get rid of the blank cells between my cells which have info in them by using F5 to find the blank cells, then Ctrl + - to delete them, and shift the cells up. But when I try to do that, it tells me that there are 'No cells found'.

I've noticed that if I select my 'blank' cells, Excel still counts them: which is weird. But if I press Delete on those selected cells, the count goes away, and then I can go F5, blanks, Ctrl + - and Shift cells up, and it works...

So my question is how can I still do that, but with these blank cells which Excel thinks aren't blank? I've tried to go through and just press delete over the blank cells, but I have a lot of data and realized that it would take me WAY too long. I need to find a way to select these 'blank' cells within a selection of data.

Thanks in advance for your help! :)

Answer 1

a simple way to select and clear these blank cells to make them blank:

1. Press ctrl + a or pre-select your range
2. Press ctrl + f
3. Leave find what empty and select match entire cell contents.
4. Hit find all
5. Press ctrl + a to select all the empty cells found
6. Close the find dialog
7. Press backspace or delete