How To Remove (blank) Values in Your Excel Pivot Table

Excel Pivot Table Example

You might call it perfectionism, but I hate when my reports don’t look their best. One of the most irritating elements is the “(blank)” text you may have on your Excel pivot tables.

I’ve tried some pivot table options to eliminate that word, “blank,” but nothing seems to work properly.

Excel Pivot Table Options

So I’ve come up with another way to remove the blank from a pivot table. It requires playing with conditional formatting.

  1. Select the cells you want to remove that show (blank) text. It could be a single cell, a column, a row, a full sheet or a pivot table.
  2. On the Home tab, go on Conditional Formatting, and click on New rule…
Conditional Formatting Excel Pivot Table
  1. Select Format only cells that contain.
  2. Set that rule type to Cell Value | equal to | and input (blank) text.
Formatting Rule
  1. Click on Format…
  2. On the Number tab, select Custom category, then type three semi-colons: ;;;
Jeremy_Cottino_Blank_values_figure_5

I must admit, it’s a kind of magic.

Jeremy_Cottino_Blank_values_figure_6

A version of this article first appeared on Jeremy Cottino’s blog.

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Written by Jeremy Cottino
Jeremy Cottino, PMP, ITIL certified, is a senior project manager with eight years of experience in project planning/scheduling and management of large IS/IT projects for multinational companies. He's also a technology enthusiast and Microsoft Project MVP. Visit Jeremy's blog or email him at jcottino@hotmail.com.
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3 Comments
  1. It’s been kicking around the internet for a while, but your screenshots make it very easy to follow.

    https://projectserverpants.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/remove-those-blanking-blanks/

    You can also replace the values right in the cell with spaces to remove the blanks. (just type spaces right in the cell. You’d need to do it for each field that has blanks showing)

    Thanks!

  2. Select the whole worksheet or the 2 columns and do the same

    • This was a huge help Jeremy.
      THANK YOU!

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