Clearing Everything Except Formulas

Roni wants want to clear everything in a workbook except for cells which may contain formulas. This task can be completed either manually or through the use of a macro.

If you want to do the clearing manually, you can follow these steps:

1. Press F5. Excel displays the Go To dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Go To dialog box.

2. Click the Special button. Excel displays the Go To Special dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Go To Special dialog box.

3. Select the Constants radio button. The four check boxes under the Formulas option then become available. (This is a bit confusing. Why Microsoft made the Constants radio button control some check boxes under a different radio button is not immediately clear.)
4. Make sure that all the check boxes under the Formulas radio button are selected. (They should have been selected by default.)
5. Click OK. Excel selects all the constants (cells that don't contain formulas) in the worksheet.
6. Press the Del key.

This works great if you only need to clear out the non-formula contents of a worksheet once in a while. If you need to do it more often, then you can simply use the macro recorder to record the above steps. Or, if you prefer, you can create your own macro from scratch, such as the following one:

Sub ClearAllButFormulas()
    Dim wks As Worksheet

    For Each wks In Worksheets
        'ignore errors in case there is only formulas
        On Error Resume Next
        wks.Cells.SpecialCells _
          (xlCellTypeConstants, 23).ClearContents
        On Error GoTo 0
    Next
    Set wks = Nothing
End Sub

This macro is particularly useful if you need to clear out all the non-formula cells in an entire workbook. The reason is because it does the clearing on every worksheet in the entire workbook, without you needing to do the clearing manually.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3226) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Clearing Everything Except Formulas.