Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely used tools to store, sort, and analyze data.
If you are someone like me who is into number crunching or anything data analytics, you must be dealing with constantly changing numeric values.
This requires you to update, delete and manipulate data quickly and effectively. In such instances, knowing how to delete rows using a keyboard shortcut can come in handy.
For example, say you’re a manufacturer of electrical appliances and have a dataset of suppliers. Now, you need to delete all rows containing a specific vendor’s data. To do this, you can delete data from one cell at a time for a smaller data set. The same task gets tedious if you have a larger worksheet to work with.
Don’t worry, we are here to the rescue. The following tutorial will teach you how to delete single or multiple rows within seconds using easy shortcut.
Keyboard Shortcut to Delete Row in Excel
Control + Minus Key (when you select the entire row)
or
Control + Minus key + R + Enter (when you select cells in the rows you want to delete)
How to Use the Keyboard Shortcut to Delete Rows in Excel
Let’s now look at some ways we can use the shortcut to delete rows.
Shortcut to Delete a Single Row
Below are the steps to delete a row in Excel using a keyboard shortcut:
- Select the cell in the row that you want to delete
- Use the keyboard shortcut Control + Minus key + R + Enter (hold the control key and then press the minus key followed by the R key and then Enter)
Note: You can use the shortcut Control + Minus Key only if you have selected the entire row. In case you have only selected a cell in the row that you want to delete, you need to use the entire shortcut.
Pro Tip: You can select an entire row by selecting any cell in the row and then using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Spacebar
Shortcut to Delete Multiple Rows
Below are the steps to delete multiple adjacent or non-adjacent rows in Excel using a keyboard shortcut:
- Select the cell in the rows that you want to delete (these could be adjacent or non-adjacent)
- Use the keyboard shortcut Control + Minus key + R + Enter (hold the control key and then press the minus key followed by the R key and then Enter)
These shortcuts are real timesavers and can be used when you need to delete multiple rows in Excel.
Bookmark and refer to this cheat sheet whenever required to make working with Excel quicker.
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