Showing Text when a Cell is Empty

Sheryl can use Conditional Formatting to make a cell appear a certain color if the cell is empty. Instead of a different color for the empty cell, she would like the empty cell to show some text. For instance, if the cell is empty, she might want to have it show "Customer Name," which would serve as a prompt to the user. Sheryl wonders if there is a way to do this sort of "conditional formatting" that shows text.

The short answer is no, this cannot be done. The traditional way to get around it is to separate your prompts from your input cells. For instance, if the user input is expected in cell B4, you might put the wording "Customer Name:" (with the colon) in cell A4. If you want the wording to disappear when the customer name is entered, you could, instead, use a formula in cell A4:

=IF(ISBLANK(B4),"Customer Name","")

There's also an approach you can use that takes advantage of the way that Excel deals with "cell overrun" when the cells contain text. Let's say, for example, that (again) your user input is expected in cell B4. You could make column A very narrow—say, about a single character wide—and then in cell A4 press the Space Bar a few times and type "Customer Name." As long as there is nothing in cell B4, what you typed in cell A4 is displayed, but it looks like it is in cell B4. When someone types something in cell B4, this blocks what is in cell A4 from being displayed. You could even, if desired, make the text in cell A4 a light gray, so it appears subdued when displayed.

If you prefer to go a macro route, you'll want to create one that is triggered whenever there is a change in the worksheet. This would go into the code module for the worksheet being used:

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
    If Target.Address = "$B$4" Then
        If Target = "" Then
            ' Cell is empty; mark it and make gray
            Target = "(Customer Name)"
            With Selection.Font
                .ThemeColor = xlThemeColorDark1
                .TintAndShade = -0.249977111117893
            End With
        Else
            ' Cell contains something; remove gray
            With Selection.Font
                .ColorIndex = xlAutomatic
                .TintAndShade = 0
            End With
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Note that the macro only kicks into action if the cell being changed is cell B4.

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