Microsoft Excel Tutorial: How to delete hundreds of tiny blank columns in Excel

Welcome to another episode of the MrExcel Podcast, where we share useful Excel tips and tricks to help you become an Excel pro. In today’s episode, we will be discussing a common problem faced by many Excel users – how to quickly delete all blank columns in Excel. This can be a tedious and time-consuming task, especially if you have a large dataset with hundreds of blank columns. But fear not, we have some handy Excel hacks that will make this task a breeze.

During a recent seminar in Green Bay, I came across a dataset with a whopping 730 columns of data, with 365 blank columns in between. As you can imagine, manually deleting each column using the Alt+E, D, Entire Column shortcut and then pressing F4 to repeat the action would have been a nightmare. But then, a member of the audience, Carmela, asked if there was a faster way to delete all the blank columns. And that’s when I discovered this amazing trick.

Instead of manually deleting each column, simply select a row that is completely filled in and go to Home ＞ Find & Select ＞ Go to Special. Then, select /”Blanks/” and all the blank columns will be highlighted. Now, just go to Home ＞ Delete ＞ Delete Cells and choose /”Delete Entire Column/”. Voila! All the blank columns will be deleted in one go, leaving you with a nice, contiguous block of data.

But wait, there’s more! Did you know that you can also use the Sort function to quickly get rid of blank rows? Just select all the data and go to Data ＞ A to Z. This will sort all the blank rows to the bottom, making it easier for you to delete them. And if you want to take it a step further, you can use the Sort Left or Right function by selecting all the data and going to Data ＞ Sort. This will allow you to sort the data based on a specific row, making it perfect for sorting dates or other specific data.

And there you have it, three different methods to quickly delete all blank columns in Excel. But that’s not all, there are 617 more tricks like this in my book, /”Power Excel with MrExcel/”. So make sure to click the /”I/” in the top right-hand corner for more information. Thank you for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more Excel hacks. Happy Excel-ing!

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Method 1: Delete first column and then use F4 a lot
Method 2 from Carmella in Green Bay: Select a row, Go To Special Blanks, then Delete columns
Method 3: Sort Left to Right in Excel

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Table of Contents
(0:00) Problem Statment: Remove hundreds of blank columns in Excel
(0:33) Method 1: Delete one column and then F4 to repeat
(0:56) Method 2: Goto Special Blanks and Delete Entire Column
(1:30) To delete Rows, Sort the Data
(1:55) Method 3: Sort Left to Right to move blank columns to end
(2:05) Buy the book
(2:15) Recap from today
(2:40) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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