Deleting Rows Containing Struck-Through Text

Tara often receives workbooks containing a single worksheet where some information in the worksheet contains text that is "struck through" (the text is formatted using strikethrough). Rows that contain struck-through text need to be deleted, but Tara isn't sure of how to quickly go about this.

If you only need to do this task once in a while, the following steps will help you out if it is easy to see which cells contain the strike-through formatting:

1. Click at the left side of the first row you want to select—the first one containing struck-through text. The entire row should be selected.
2. Hold down the Ctrl key as you click at the left side of any additional rows you want to delete. (You are building a selection set of rows to delete.)
3. Press Ctrl+- (the minus key). The rows are deleted.

If it is not that easy to see all the rows containing struck-through text, you can rely on the Find feature to locate them for you:

1. Press Ctrl+F. Excel displays the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Click the Options button to expand what is available in the dialog box.
3. Make sure the Find What box is empty and place the insertion point within that box.
4. Click the Format button. Excel displays the Find Format dialog box.
5. Make sure the Font tab is visible. (It will probably be displayed by default.)
6. Click the Strikethrough check box a time or two until you see it is selected. (You shouldn't need to change anything else in the dialog box.)
7. Click OK to dismiss the Find Format dialog box.
8. Click Find All. The Find and Replace dialog box expands to show which cells contain strikethrough formatting, and the first result (in the dialog box) is selected.
9. Press Ctrl+A. This selects all the results in the dialog box.
10. Click Close to dismiss the Find Format dialog box. All the cells containing strikethrough text should now be selected. (Don't click anywhere else in the worksheet or you'll inadvertently unselect the cells.)
11. Press Ctrl+- (the minus key). Excel displays the Delete dialog box.
12. Click the Entire Row radio button.
13. Click OK. The rows are deleted.

There is a drawback to this approach—it won't find any cells containing mixed formatting. In other words, if only some of the text within the cell uses the strikethrough attribute, then that cell won't be found in step 8.

This deficiency can be overcome by using a macro. Plus, a macro is a good approach if you need to perform this task quite often. Here's one that will do the trick:

Sub DeleteSTRows()
    Dim c As Range
    Dim bCheck As Boolean
    Dim J As Integer
    Dim iRows As Integer

    iRows = Selection.Rows.Count
    If iRows > 2 Then
        For J = iRows To 1 Step -1
            bCheck = False
            For Each c In Selection.Rows(J).Cells
                bCheck = IsNull(c.Font.Strikethrough)
                If Not bCheck Then bCheck = c.Font.Strikethrough
                If bCheck Then Exit For
            Next c
            If bCheck Then Selection.Rows(J).EntireRow.Delete
        Next J
    End If
End Sub

To use the macro, simply select the cells you want to affect, and then run it. The macro steps through each row of the selection (from the last row to the first) and then checks each cell within those rows. If the cell contains struck-through text, then a flag (bCheck) is set and the entire row is deleted. (The macro won't work if your selection contains only 1 or 2 rows—that few of rows is easy enough to check and adjust manually.)

Note in the middle of the macro that the IsNull function is used. This is the part that detects if the cell contains mixed formatting. If only some of the characters in the cell use strike-through, then a null value is returned by the Strikethrough property. This is checked by IsNull and assigned to the bCheck variable. If bCheck is still False (meaning that there is no mixed use of strike-through in the cell), then the entire cell is checked to see if it has the requisite formatting.

It should be noted that if you don't want the macro to actually delete rows, but would prefer to just clear them, you can replace the .Delete method in the macro with the .Clear method.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (5270) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.