How do I delete one cell without deleting an entire row?

Hi Roger,

You can't.

You can delete the contents of a single cell, but the cell itself can be deleted only by deleting the whole row (or the whole column) that the cell occupies.

When you 'delete' the cell, I'm assuming you want the (contents of) the cells below it—or to the right of it—to move into the 'space'. Here's one way to do that. In the example, the 'cells' are 'shifted up' into the 'empty' cell space.

1. The original table. We want to 'delete' cell B6, which contains "EEEEE".
2. The same table, with all cells in column B and below B6 selected.
3. Those 'same cells' dragged up one row and dropped on B6.
4. The end result.

Note: the original content of all cells was created using formulas that 1. depended on the row they were in, and in the case of column C, also depended on the contents of the same row of column A. The original results were copied, and the Values pasted back into the same cells before 'deleting' B6. End results would be different if the formulas had remained in the cells when the 'deletion' was carried out.

Regards,

Barry

Roger,

We often see questions and complaints about how to delete just a cell and not a whole row or column, and we are usually reminded/informed that it can be done in Excel.

As Barry points out, there are questions to be answered to determine what should happen to fill the gap left by a deleted cell. In Excel there is a menu/dialog in which you must answer these questions once you request the deletion before anything happens. In Numbers, just select the data that needs to move to fill the gap, and move it. There, done.

I think the easiest way, for me the way requiring the least manual dexterity, is to Select the range to be moved. Then Edit > Mark for Move, click on the cell to be "deleted", and Edit > Move.

It's about the same number of clicks as in Excel. The only downside in Numbers is that if you are working with a very large table, selecting the range to move can involve some scrolling. It's often the case in Numbers that extremely large tables can be more difficult to work with than in Excel.

Jerry

It's not just something that's available in Excel, AppleWorks spreadsheets have done it for as long as I can remember. Of course, I mostly used it when I had information in various areas of an AppleWorks spreadsheet & just need to edit one section. With Numbers you use different tables for that.

Peggy,

I was never a big AW user as I purchased my first Mac in 2005 and mainly used Office for Mac until iWork 08 was introduced.

Deleting one cell out of a row can be disruptive of any table being used as a database, so I support the Numbers approach of assuring that the user knows what he or she is doing to the data. I can see what you liked about the AW feature, but even in AW I would say it is an unnecessary tool, more in the class of bells and whistles.

Jerry