How to prevent cell contents from printing in Excel?
When working with Excel, there may be situations where certain cell contents or data ranges are not meant for printing, such as sensitive information, work notes, intermediate calculations, or auxiliary columns. Printing these by accident could result in sharing information that should remain confidential or cause confusion to others reviewing the printout. This tutorial explores practical methods in Excel to prevent specific cell data from appearing in your printouts, helping you control what is displayed on hard copies and avoid unnecessary or unintended information disclosure. Each method has its ideal use cases, advantages, drawbacks, and precautions — read on to find the approach that fits your scenario best.
Prevent cell contents from printing by changing the Font color
Prevent cell contents from printing by hiding
Prevent cell contents from printing by Kutools for Excel
Prevent cell contents from printing by changing the Font color
One simple way to hide cell contents from the printout is to change their font color to match the background (usually white). This makes the cell text invisible when printed. This option is straightforward and does not affect the underlying data or cell formulas—data is still visible on screen unless selected or highlighted.
1. Select the cells you don’t want to print, then go to the Home tab and click Font Color. Choose a font color that matches your worksheet’s background (commonly white). See screenshot:
For example, if your worksheet background is white, choose the white font color. After this, the data in those cells appears invisible as shown below:
2. Now proceed to File or the Office Button > Print to preview your worksheet. The selected data will not appear in the print preview or printout.
Note & tips: This approach works best for smaller data areas or quick changes. The data is still present in the file, so it can be revealed by changing the font color back. Be aware that if the worksheet’s background color changes, you may need to update the font color accordingly. Also, the text may become visible if the document is exported as PDF and the background isn’t perfectly white.
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Prevent cell contents from printing by hiding
Hiding cell contents is another effective way to keep sensitive or unnecessary data from being printed. There are multiple techniques under this category, each suited to slightly different tasks depending on whether you want to hide just the content, the entire column or row, or only for the printout. The underlying data remains intact and can be restored as needed.
Method 1: Format cells as "";"", making the content display as blank
1. Select the cells you want to exclude from printing and right-click to choose Format Cells.
2. Inside the Format Cells dialog, under the Number tab, click Custom from the Category list. Type "";"";"";"" into the Type field. See screenshot:
3. Click OK. The cell contents will now be hidden from view as well as from print, but the underlying value still exists if referenced in formulas.
Note: Formatted cells display as empty both on screen and in print, but the data can still be used by other formulas. For accidental reappearance, just clear the custom format.
Method 2: Right-click to hide the whole column or row
If you want to hide an entire column or row, click its header to select, right-click, then choose Hide from the menu. This keeps the column/row (and all its cells) from both view and the printout.
Note: Hiding entire rows or columns is suitable if you don’t want to show a whole data series. However, if you share the file, others can easily unhide them. It’s best used as a temporary solution before printing.
Method 3: Use Group to temporarily hide columns or rows
1. Select the column(s) or row(s) you’d like to hide. Then navigate to Data > Group. See screenshot:
2. When the Group dialog appears, select Rows if you’re hiding rows or Columns for columns, then click OK.
Note: If you already selected complete rows/columns, this prompt may be skipped.
3. Click the small minus (-) button for the group indicator on the sheet to hide the group. This temporarily collapses your selection so that it will not show in the printout.
Tip: Grouping is beneficial when you want to allow others to expand/collapse data easily without deleting or permanently hiding rows/columns.
Prevent cell contents from printing by Kutools for Excel
If you need more flexibility and efficiency in customizing printed ranges, or if you want to print only non-adjacent or multiple areas while omitting certain confidential data, Kutools for Excel provides specialized tools to streamline the process.
After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:
1. Click Kutools Plus > Printing Tools > Print Multiple Selection Wizard. See screenshot:
2. In the popped out dialog, click the plus button to add a selection to print. See screenshot:
3. In the following dialog, you can press Ctrl to select multiple non-contiguous ranges. This enables you to exclude any range you wish from the printout and maintain full control over printing content. See screenshot:
4. Click OK to see all selected areas added to the Range to print box, then click Next. See screenshot:
5. In the Step 2 of 3 dialog, adjust the print settings as desired and then click Next.
6. In the final step, choose the required handling for the worksheet—commonly Activate the worksheet, but don’t print it—and click Finish.
After these steps, a new worksheet containing only your selected ranges will be created for printing, with all other cell contents excluded. See screenshot:
Tip: If the selected areas are not in your preferred order, you can drag and reorder them as needed before printing. Click here for more details on Print Multiple Selection Wizard.
Prevent Cell Contents From Printing
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