How to Remove Strikethrough in Excel: 7 Methods That Actually Work

Learning how to remove strikethrough in Excel is one of those small but essential skills that saves hours when you inherit messy spreadsheets, clean up shared project trackers, or prepare a workbook for export. Strikethrough formatting—those horizontal lines drawn through cell text—is often applied to mark completed tasks, deprecated SKUs, or canceled orders, but it tends to linger long after its purpose ends. The good news is you have multiple removal paths, from a single keyboard shortcut to powerful VBA macros that strip it from entire workbooks in seconds.

This guide walks through every reliable method, including the universal Ctrl+5 shortcut, the Format Cells dialog, conditional formatting cleanup, Find & Replace tricks, and macro automation. We will also cover edge cases like strikethrough applied to only part of a cell's text, strikethrough hidden inside conditional formatting rules, and the situation where strikethrough refuses to disappear because it is locked behind a protected sheet. Each section gives you a concrete step-by-step you can follow on Windows, Mac, and Excel for the web.

If you frequently work with formulas alongside formatting, you may already be comfortable with functions like excellent bath towels and other statistical references—but formatting cleanup follows a different mental model than formulas, so we will keep the language plain and the screenshots descriptive. By the end of this article, you will be able to remove strikethrough from a single cell, a range, an entire sheet, or every worksheet in a workbook with full confidence.

Beyond pure removal, we will also cover prevention. Many users do not realize that strikethrough often reappears because a conditional formatting rule is silently re-applying it whenever a value in a status column changes to "Done" or "Cancelled". If you remove the formatting manually without addressing the underlying rule, it will return the next time the workbook recalculates. Identifying and disabling those rules is a critical step in keeping spreadsheets clean for the long term.

Strikethrough behaves slightly differently in Excel 365, Excel 2021, Excel 2019, and Excel for the Web. The Ctrl+5 shortcut works everywhere on Windows, while Mac users press Cmd+Shift+X. Excel Online supports strikethrough through the Home ribbon but hides some advanced format dialogs. We will flag these platform differences as they appear so you never get stuck wondering why a shortcut from a tutorial does not work on your machine.

Finally, we will compare strikethrough removal against related cleanup tasks like clearing all formatting, resetting cell styles, and stripping conditional formatting in bulk. Those nuclear options are sometimes the fastest path, but they also wipe colors, borders, and number formats you might want to keep. Knowing when to use a scalpel versus a sledgehammer is the difference between a five-second fix and an hour of rebuilding lost formatting.

Whether you are a project manager auditing a task tracker, an analyst preparing data for a stakeholder review, or a student cleaning up a budget template, this guide gives you the exact keystrokes and clicks you need. Bookmark it, share it with colleagues who ask the same question every quarter, and use it as a checklist whenever a strikethrough cell appears where it does not belong.

The Format Cells dialog is the most reliable way to remove strikethrough when shortcuts fail or when you need surgical control over multiple font attributes at once. Open it by selecting your range and pressing Ctrl+1 on Windows or Cmd+1 on Mac. The dialog opens to the last-used tab, so click the Font tab. Under the Effects section near the bottom, you will see three checkboxes: Strikethrough, Superscript, and Subscript. Uncheck Strikethrough and click OK. The change applies to every selected cell simultaneously, even if some cells had strikethrough and others did not.

This method is especially useful when strikethrough applies to only part of a cell's text rather than the whole cell. To target partial strikethrough, double-click the cell to enter edit mode, highlight the specific characters that need fixing, then press Ctrl+1 and uncheck Strikethrough. This is the only way to remove strikethrough from individual letters or words without affecting the rest of the cell. It is also the workflow you need when cleaning up text imported from Word documents where strikethrough was applied to specific phrases.

If you are working with a large workbook and want to remove strikethrough from every cell on a sheet, click the gray triangle in the top-left corner where the row and column headers meet—this selects every cell. Then press Ctrl+5 once. If strikethrough was present anywhere, this single keystroke may inadvertently apply it to cells that did not have it before, because Ctrl+5 is a toggle. The safer approach is to open Format Cells, uncheck Strikethrough explicitly, and click OK. That sets the property to false everywhere rather than flipping it.

For workbooks where strikethrough is mixed with other formatting issues, consider clearing only the font effects using a custom approach. Copy a cell that has clean formatting, select the target range, right-click and choose Paste Special → Formats. This overwrites strikethrough along with all other formatting in the destination cells. It is fast but indiscriminate, so use it only when you want to standardize the entire range's appearance to match a known-good template cell.

Excel for the web has a slightly simpler interface. You will find the Strikethrough button directly on the Home ribbon, in the Font group, next to Bold and Italic. Click it once to toggle strikethrough off for the selected cells. The web version does not expose the full Format Cells dialog, so partial-text strikethrough removal requires switching to the desktop app. If you collaborate with team members who use only Excel Online, build your workflows around full-cell formatting to avoid hidden issues.

Some advanced users prefer to use the Name Box and Go To Special features together to find every cell containing strikethrough before removing it. Unfortunately, Excel's built-in Find & Replace does not directly search by font effects, but you can use the Format button inside Find & Replace, choose the Font tab, check Strikethrough, and then Find All.

Excel will list every match. Select them all in the results pane, close the dialog, and apply Ctrl+5 to clear the formatting in one action. If you ever filter on these results, the techniques behind colleges of excellence can speed up navigation across long sheets.

Remember that strikethrough on numbers does not change the underlying value used in calculations. A cell that displays $1,200 with strikethrough still contributes $1,200 to SUM, AVERAGE, or any other formula referencing it. If you want to exclude struck-through items from a calculation, you need a helper column and a status flag—formatting alone does not affect math. Many teams misunderstand this and assume that crossing out a row removes it from totals, which leads to subtle reporting errors.

Conditional formatting is the single biggest reason strikethrough refuses to disappear in Excel. A rule that says "If column F equals Done, then apply strikethrough to row" will silently reapply the formatting every time someone updates a status cell. You can press Ctrl+5 a hundred times and the strikethrough will return on the next recalculation. To find these rules, navigate to Home → Conditional Formatting → Manage Rules, then change the dropdown from "Current Selection" to "This Worksheet" or "This Workbook" so you see every rule, not just rules attached to the active range.

Look through the list for any rule whose preview shows the strikethrough effect. Click the rule, then click Edit Rule to inspect the formula or condition. Common patterns include =$F2="Done", =$F2="Cancelled", =ISNUMBER($G2), or =$H2<TODAY(). If you find the rule that drives unwanted strikethrough, you have three choices: delete it entirely, edit the formula to be more selective, or change the formatting style to remove the strikethrough effect while keeping color or other indicators in place.

Deleting a rule is permanent within the workbook but reversible if you save a backup before making changes. Always duplicate the workbook before mass-deleting conditional formatting rules, because some rules combine strikethrough with valuable color coding that you may not want to lose. The safer path is editing the rule: click Edit Rule, click Format, switch to the Font tab, and uncheck Strikethrough. The rule still fires on the same condition but no longer applies the strike effect, leaving the rest of the formatting intact.

Another sneaky source of strikethrough is cell styles. If your workbook uses a custom style that includes strikethrough as part of its definition, every cell with that style will display the effect. Check Home → Cell Styles, right-click each custom style, and choose Modify to see the underlying format. Remove strikethrough from any style definition that includes it, then click OK. The change propagates to every cell using that style across the entire workbook instantly without requiring further manual edits.

Tables and named ranges can also carry formatting that includes strikethrough as a default style. If you converted a range to a table using Ctrl+T and chose a table style with strikethrough banding, every new row inherits the effect. Click anywhere in the table, go to Table Design, and choose a different style or click the Clear button at the bottom of the style gallery. This resets table formatting without affecting the data or formulas inside the table.

For complex workbooks with strikethrough scattered across many sheets, use the Inquire add-in (available in Excel 365 and Excel 2019 Professional) to audit formatting. Inquire's Workbook Analysis tool lists every cell with non-default formatting and can help you spot strikethrough patterns you would otherwise miss. If Inquire is not enabled, go to File → Options → Add-ins → COM Add-ins → Go, and check Inquire. Restart Excel to see the new Inquire tab on the ribbon with full audit tools available.

Finally, remember that paste operations can reintroduce strikethrough from external sources. When copying from another workbook, Word, or a web page, use Paste Special → Values rather than a standard paste to avoid importing unwanted formatting. This is particularly important when pulling data from email attachments or shared drives where the source document's formatting standards may differ from yours. Building this habit eliminates ninety percent of strikethrough surprises in collaborative workbooks across multiple departments or vendors.

VBA macros are the fastest way to remove strikethrough across large workbooks, especially when you inherit a tracker with dozens of sheets. Open the VBA editor with Alt+F11, insert a new module via Insert → Module, and paste a simple loop. A basic macro reads: Sub RemoveStrikethrough() Dim ws As Worksheet: For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets: ws.Cells.Font.Strikethrough = False: Next ws: End Sub. Run it with F5 and every cell on every sheet loses its strikethrough property in seconds, regardless of how many cells or sheets the workbook contains.

For more targeted removal, modify the macro to work only on the active sheet: ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Font.Strikethrough = False. This avoids touching sheets that might intentionally use strikethrough for design purposes. You can also add a confirmation dialog using MsgBox so the macro asks before running, which prevents accidental cleanup when a colleague shares a workbook with you. Save the macro in your Personal Macro Workbook so it is available across every Excel session and every workbook you open going forward.

If you need to remove strikethrough only from cells matching a condition, use a For Each loop with an If statement: For Each cell In ActiveSheet.UsedRange: If cell.Value = "Active" Then cell.Font.Strikethrough = False: Next cell. This is useful when some struck-through cells should remain that way (archived items) while others should be reset (mistakenly marked items). Combine the macro with input boxes to make it interactive, letting users specify which conditions to clean without editing code directly each time.

For workbooks with conditional formatting that applies strikethrough, VBA can also clear those rules. The line ActiveSheet.Cells.FormatConditions.Delete removes every conditional formatting rule on the active sheet, but use it carefully because it deletes color coding too. A more surgical approach loops through FormatConditions and inspects each rule's Font.Strikethrough property, deleting only rules that match. This requires more code but preserves color-only rules that you may want to keep for visual organization across status columns.

Macros can also produce reports of every cell with strikethrough before removing them, giving you an audit trail. Loop through UsedRange and write each strikethrough cell's address to a new sheet called "Audit". This is invaluable for compliance work or when explaining changes to stakeholders who need to know what was modified. Add a timestamp using Now() and the user's name from Environ("username") so the audit log captures who ran the cleanup and when. If you also need to confirm uniqueness in your data, techniques like bill and ted's excellent adventure cast pair well with audit macros.

If you do not want to write VBA, Office Scripts (available in Excel 365 on the web) provide a similar capability using TypeScript. A short script reads: function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) { workbook.getWorksheets().forEach(ws => ws.getUsedRange()?.getFormat().getFont().setStrikethrough(false)); }. Save the script in your Office Scripts library and run it across any workbook with one click. Office Scripts also integrate with Power Automate, letting you trigger strikethrough cleanup as part of an automated workflow when files arrive in a SharePoint folder.

For users who prefer no-code automation, Power Query can reshape data and discard formatting entirely. When you import a table through Power Query and load it back into Excel as a new table, all original formatting—including strikethrough—is stripped. The resulting table inherits only the styles you apply in the Query Editor or in the destination workbook. This is a clean-slate approach that works well when you want to start fresh with consistent formatting across a frequently imported dataset from external sources like CRM exports.

Beyond the mechanics of removal, building good formatting habits prevents strikethrough problems from recurring. Establish a team convention that strikethrough means archived rather than completed—archived implies the row should be moved to a separate sheet within thirty days, while completed implies it stays in place with color coding only. This single rule eliminates ninety percent of strikethrough drift in shared workbooks because everyone knows that strikethrough is a temporary state preceding archival, not a permanent annotation that lives forever in the active sheet.

Document your formatting standards in a hidden "README" sheet inside every workbook template your team uses. Include screenshots of acceptable formatting, list every conditional formatting rule with its purpose, and provide a one-line VBA macro that resets the workbook to clean state. New team members can review the README on day one, and existing members can rerun the reset macro whenever drift accumulates. Templates that document themselves require less maintenance and produce fewer surprised users six months down the road when ownership changes hands.

When inheriting a workbook with heavy strikethrough usage, audit before you clean. Make a copy of the workbook, then use Find & Replace with Format → Font → Strikethrough checked to count every affected cell. Save that count, run your cleanup, and compare against the original to confirm you removed exactly what you intended. This audit trail protects you when someone asks why a specific cell no longer shows strikethrough—you have the original count and the rules that applied it documented for review with full timestamps.

Train colleagues to use status columns and filtering rather than strikethrough whenever possible. A status column with values like Open, In Progress, Done, and Cancelled, combined with Excel's filter functionality, gives the same visual organization as strikethrough without the formatting baggage. Filters can hide Done rows entirely so the active sheet shows only work in progress, and pivot tables can summarize counts by status. This is a more scalable approach for any workbook that will grow beyond a few hundred rows over time.

Consider using cell comments or threaded comments to record context instead of strikethrough. A comment that reads "Cancelled by client on 2026-03-15, see ticket #4521" preserves the rationale in a way that strikethrough cannot. Comments are searchable through Review → Show Comments, and they survive paste operations that would otherwise strip strikethrough formatting. They also do not interfere with calculations, conditional formatting, or sorting, so they integrate cleanly with the rest of your workbook ecosystem.

If your team uses Microsoft Teams or SharePoint for collaboration, link workbook changes to a changelog stored alongside the file. Every time someone removes strikethrough from a row, log the cell address, the previous value, and a one-line reason. This is overkill for casual spreadsheets but essential for financial models, compliance trackers, and any workbook subject to audit. The discipline of logging changes often reveals patterns—certain users always apply strikethrough incorrectly, suggesting a training opportunity for the whole department.

Finally, keep your Excel installation current. Microsoft 365 receives monthly updates that occasionally introduce small improvements to formatting behavior, conditional formatting performance, and VBA reliability. Running an outdated version means missing fixes that could prevent strikethrough-related bugs from biting you. Open File → Account → Update Options → Update Now to confirm you are on the latest channel. For organizations on the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel, coordinate with IT to schedule updates that include the latest formatting improvements without disrupting active projects.