How to Delete a Column in Excel via Shortcut

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How to Delete Column in Excel Shortcut: There are occasions when the data in an Excel worksheet has columns that you want to remove. The columns you want to remove could be incorrect, redundant, or irrelevant.  Whatever the situation, if you want to know how to delete column in excel then we can help you with this tutorial to delete a column in excel. 

Fun Fact* A total of 16384 columns are accessible in an Excel Worksheet. The total number of Columns accessible in an Excel worksheet does not change when you delete a new Column. To keep the total number of Columns the same, new blank Columns (equal to the removed number of Columns) will be put at the extreme right side of the worksheet. 

In just 2 easy steps, you can delete columns in Excel in the following 3 ways:

How to Delete Column in Excel shortcut? 

To delete a column in Excel spreadsheet, there are various methods one can use. Let’s proceed with How to Delete Column in Excel shortcut: Methods to delete a column in Exce

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Method 1 – To delete a single column from the Excel worksheet.

Step 1: Click on the Column letter of the column you wish to delete to select it. Right-click anywhere on the Column and choose “Delete” from the context menu after selecting the Column letter. I have selected column B here.

Another option is to use the “Delete Sheet Columns” command found in the Excel Ribbon > “Cells” Group > “Delete” menu button, as seen below.

Step 2: The column to the right of the deleted Column is moved one column to the left to take the place of the deleted Column. As illustrated in the image below, all columns on the right side of the deleted Column are moved to the left by one column.

If you wish to delete many columns from an Excel spreadsheet, deleting each column one by one is not an effective way. Then How to Delete a Column in Excel Shortcut? If you want to delete many columns, use one of the methods listed below to delete multiple columns

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Method 2 – To delete multiple contiguous Columns from the Excel worksheet.

Follow these procedures to eliminate numerous contiguous columns from an Excel worksheet.

Step 1: Click, drag, and release the mouse pointer on the Column letters to choose the Columns you want to eliminate from the Excel worksheet. In this case, I’d like to remove Columns B and C from an Excel worksheet. As a result, I chose Column B and Column C.

After you’ve selected the Columns, right-click on any of them and choose “Delete” from the context menu, as seen in the figure below.

Step 2 – From the Excel worksheet, two consecutive columns are eliminated. Removed Columns on the right are moved to the left to fill the space left by two deleted Columns. As seen in the image below, all columns on the right-hand side of the removed Columns are relocated to the left-hand side by two columns.

Method 3 – To delete multiple noncontiguous Columns from the Excel worksheet.

How to Delete a Column in Excel Shortcut? Follow these procedures to eliminate several noncontiguous columns from an Excel worksheet.

Step 1: Press and hold the “Ctrl” key while clicking on the Column Letters of the noncontiguous Columns you want to eliminate. In this example, I’d like to remove two noncontiguous columns from an Excel worksheet: Column B and Column D. As a result, I chose Column B and Column D.

To delete multiple noncontiguous Columns, right-click on any of the chosen Rows and pick “Delete” from the context menu, as seen in the image below.

Step 2: Remove Column B and Column D from the Excel worksheet. As illustrated in the image below, the columns to the right of Column B and Column D are moved to the left to replace Column B and Column D.

Excel was the first spreadsheet that allowed users to customise the look of their spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes, and cell appearance). In addition, it introduced intelligent cell recomputation, which updates only cells dependent on the modified cell (previous spreadsheet programmes recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). It also introduced auto-fill, which allows you to drag and expand the selection box to replicate the contents of a cell or row to adjacent cells or rows, intelligently modifying the copies by the process of incrementing cell references or contents. Excel also came with a lot of graphing features as well. With all of these super tools & features plus giving its users ability to customise their spreadsheets is what makes Microsoft excel the best spreadsheet software.

Things to Keep in Mind while you delete a column in excel: 

• When deleting a column, we must always pick the “Entire column” option. Otherwise, we may encounter an issue with incorrect data movement in your table.
• If we choose the “Shift cell up” option in the table, only the cell in the table is destroyed, not the entire column, and our data from the cell below is pushed higher.
• If we pick the “Shift cell left” option from the table, just the cell in the table is destroyed, not the entire row, and the data in the entire row is shifted to the left.
• If we pick “Delete Entire Column,” the specified column will be erased.

FAQs: Delete column in Excel

How to delete a column in excel shortcut

To delete a column in excel in a shortcut way, this is what you need to do:

Choose a cell that needs to be delete in Excel
Hold down the Ctrl key.
Holding down the Shift key while pressing the Spacebar.
The whole column is underlined.
Keep pressing the Ctrl key.
Without letting go of the Ctrl key, press and release the “-” key.

The chosen column is removed.

How to delete empty cells in a column in excel

Firstly, click the Find & Select button
Now you need to click on Go to speical
Select Blanks
All the empty rows and cells will then be highlighted after you click OK.
On the Home Tab, select Delete from the Cells section.
the Delete Sheet Rows button
All of the rows with blanks will be highlighted when you choose Blanks.

By choosing Delete in the Home tab’s Cells section, you may now remove the highlighted rows. All of the blank cells that were highlighted will be deleted after this action.

How to delete duplicates in a column in excel

To remove duplicates in excel:

Choose the cells that you want to purge of duplicate data.
At the top, select the “Data” tab.
A pop-up will appear when you click “Remove Duplicates.”
Any columns containing data you want to maintain can be unchecked.
To remove the duplicates, click OK.

How to delete rows with blank cells in a certain Column in Excel

Click Home > Find & Select > Go To Special, then choose the column where empty cells will be removed from rows.

Check the Blanks box in the Go To Special dialogue box, then click OK. See the image above:

Then the specified column’s empty cells are all picked out right away.
Select “Delete” from the right-click menu after selecting these empty cells with the right-clicking tool.
Check the Entire row box in the deleting dialogue box, then press the OK button.
The blank cells in every row of the selected column have now been removed.