Published on November 1, 2023 by Jake Sheridan
In this tutorial, I will show you how to strike through a cell in Google Sheets. While other spreadsheet programs like Excel offer cell border features that diagonally strike through a cell, Google Sheets unfortunately does not have such a functionality at the time of writing. However, you can insert a floating X above a cell or use text formatting to achieve a similar effect. This tutorial covers both of these methods.
Use Text Formatting to Strike Through
If you simply want to show that the content of a cell is no longer relevant or completed, using text formatting to strike through the text may be your best option.
Here’s how to apply text formatting to strike through a cell:
Step 1
Select the cell or cells that you want to strike through.
Step 2
Click on the “Strikethrough” icon in the toolbar.
Step 3
All selected cells will be struck through with the text formatting.
Insert an X above a Cell
If the appearance of text formatting does not suit your purpose and you need diagonal lines to strike through the cell, you can insert an X using the drawing feature in Google Sheets.
Step 1
Open the “Insert” tab and choose “Drawing”.
Step 2
In the drawing editor, click on the shape icon to open the shape menu, then hover over the “Equation” sub-menu and choose the multiplication symbol.
Step 3
Your cursor will transform into a black plus sign. Click and drag on the canvas to add the multiplication symbol.
Step 4
Click on the yellow diamond near the top-left corner of the box and drag it upwards to make the lines of the X narrower.
Step 5
If desired, set the fill color and border color using the menus in the toolbar.
Step 6
Once you are done editing the X, click “Save and Close”. The X will appear floating above the cells.
Step 7
Position the X above the cell you want to strike through, then use the square resizing handles to adjust it to the size of the cell.
Step 8
Your cell is now struck through.
Summary
In this tutorial, I have explained how to strike through a cell in Google Sheets. Want more tutorials on Google Sheets? Check out all the Google Sheets tutorials on Crawlan.com.
