How to quickly hide cell contents in Excel?

1. Select the range cells that you want to hide the cell values.

2. Then click Home > Format > Format Cells…, see screenshot:

3. And a Format Cells dialog box will display, click Number on the top ribbon, and then click Custom in the Category list, in the Type box, please enter ";;;" (three semicolons). See screenshot:

4. Then click OK. And the cell contents you selected have been hidden.

Notes: 1.The selected cells appear blank on the worksheet, but a value appears in the formula bar if you click one of the cells.

2. The hidden cell values can be removed when you select and delete them. And they are also can be changed.

If you want to display the hidden values, click General in the Category list to apply the default number format.

You may notice that even you have hidden the cell content, but the cell content will display in the formula bar when you click these cells. But some users may want to prevent others from viewing the cell contents from both cells and formula bars, how to get it done? The following method will solve this problem easily.

In addition to hide cell content and displaying noting in the selected cell, we can also hide the cell contents and display randomly strings with Kutools for Excel’s Encrypt Cells utility.

1. Select the cells whose contents you will hide, and click Kutools Plus > Encrypt Cells.

2. In the popping up Encrypt Cells dialog box, type password in both Password box and Confirm box, and then click the Ok button.

Then you will see all cell contents in the selected range are replaced by random strings. See screen shot below:

Notes:

(1) When clicking the cells with hidden cell contents, you will not view the cell contents in the formula bar too.

(2) You can restore the hidden cell contents with selecting these cells, clicking Enterprise > Decrypt Cells, and entering your specified password.