Microsoft Office

Part I
Getting Started with Excel
Selecting special types of cells
As you use Excel, you may need to locate specific types of cells in your worksheets. For example, wouldn’t
it be handy to be able to locate every cell that contains a formula — or perhaps all the cells whose value
depends on the current cell? Excel provides an easy way to locate these and many other special types of
cells. Simply choose Home ➪ Select & Find ➪ Go To Special to display the Go To Special dialog box,
shown in Figure 5.5.
FIGURE 5.5
Use the Go To Special dialog box to select specific types of cells.
After you make your choice in the dialog box, Excel selects the qualifying subset of cells in the current
selection. Usually, this subset of cells is a multiple selection. If no cells qualify, Excel lets you know with the
message No cells were found.
TIP
If you bring up the Go To Special dialog box with only one cell selected, Excel bases its selection
on the entire used area of the worksheet. Otherwise, the selection is based on the
selected range.
Table 5.1 offers a description of the options available in the Go To Special dialog box. Some of the options
are very useful.
TABLE 5.1
Go To Special Options
Option
Comments
Constants
Formulas
Blanks
What It Does
Selects only the cells that contain a cell comment.
Selects all nonempty cells that don’t contain formulas. Use the check boxes under the
Formulas option to choose which types of nonformula cells to include.
Selects cells that contain formulas. Qualify this by selecting the type of result: numbers,
text, logical values (TRUE or FALSE), or errors.
Selects all empty cells.
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