How To Strikethrough In Google Sheets (With Examples)

In Google Sheets, you can easily strikethrough text or cells.

There are four options for doing this: a keyboard shortcut, the strikethrough button in the menu bar, the strikethrough function in the Format Dropdown, or using conditional formatting.

Strikethrough formatting is a font formatting feature that is rarely used but is extremely useful.

It is a great way to visually indicate that something has been deleted, removed, or is no longer relevant without removing it from your text.

This post will show you how to create strikethrough font in a variety of ways inside Google Sheets.

Let’s dive right in.

Strikethrough in Google Sheets (Quick Guide)

The Quickest way to strikethrough in Google Sheets is to use the strikethrough keyboard shortcut. To do so, select the cell or cells containing the text you want to strikethrough, then press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows, Command (⌘) + Shift + X on Mac, and Alt + Shift + 5 on ChromeOS.

So far, using the shortcut is one of the quickest ways to strikethrough text or cells in your Google Sheets document.

However, there are other incredibly simple ways to complete the same task. The table below summarizes all of them.

Method One: keyboard Shortcut	Alt + Shift + 5 for Windows Command (⌘) + Shift + X for Mac Alt + Shift + 5 for ChromeOS.
Method Two: Strikethrough button	On the Google Sheets menu bar, in the formatting group where you can find Bold or Italic icons, there is also the strikethrough icon indicated by a horizontally crossed S; click on it to apply strikethrough to your text.
Method Three: The Format Dropdown	To strikethrough with this method, in the menu bar, select Format > Strikethrough.
Method Four: Using Conditional Formating	This method involves a lot of steps which are also discussed in this article.

Now, let’s take a closer look at each method for making a strikethrough in Google Docs.

4 Ways to Strikethrough in Google Sheets

As we briefly described, there are a few various ways to strikethrough in Google Sheets. Four methods to be exact.

In this section, we’ll take a detailed look at how each method can be used to perform this task.

Let’s start with the quickest.

Option 1: Keyboard Shortcut to Create Strikethrough In Google Sheets

You are correct if you think to yourself, “There has to be a faster way to get strikethrough in Google Sheets.”

Google Sheets, like most commonly used functions, has a keyboard shortcut for strikethrough as well as many other tasks.

So, if you want to get the job done as soon as possible, use the hotkeys or key combinations listed below:

On Windows, Press Alt + Shift + 5
On MacOS, Press Command (⌘) + Shift + X
On ChromeOS, Press Alt + Shift + 5

You can use these shortcuts to strikethrough an entire cell, part of the content in the cell, or a range of cells.

Below are illustrations on how to strikethrough in Google Sheets using these strikethrough shortcuts.

To strikethrough a single cell, select it and press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows, Command (⌘) + Shift + X on Mac, and Alt + Shift + 5 on ChromeOS.

To draw a line through all values in a range of cells, select the range and press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows, Command (⌘) + Shift + X on Mac, or Alt + Shift + 5 on ChromeOS.

To strikethrough part of the values in a cell, enter Edit mode by double-clicking the cell, select the text you wish to strikethrough, then press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows, Command (⌘) + Shift + X on Mac, or Alt + Shift + 5 on ChromeOS.

To apply strikethrough to some selected cells, press down the Ctrl key whilst you click on the cells you wish to strikethrough, then press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows, Command (⌘) + Shift + X on Mac, or Alt + Shift + 5 on ChromeOS.

Option 2: Using the Strikethrough icon or button on the Menus

You can also add strikethrough formatting to the values of a cell or range of cells using the strikethrough icon or button located on the Menu in Google Sheets.

To do so, kindly obey the following instructions:

Open your Google Sheets Document.
Select the cell or range of cells that you want to strikethrough.

NOTE: You can select a single cell, a range of cells, or certain values within a cell for which you wish to apply the strikethrough formatting.

Select the Strikethrough icon on the menus.

After the shortcuts, this is yet another quick method you can use to add strikethrough formatting to your cells in Google Sheets.

However, Google may hide the strikethrough icon if your computer screen is small. When that happens, click on the ellipsis to reveal the rest of the menu items including the strikethrough icon.

Option 3: How to Strikethrough using the Format Dropdown

You can also apply strikethrough formatting to the values of a cell or range of cells in Google Sheets by using the Format Dropdown menu on the Ribbon.

To do so, please follow the instructions below:

Go to your Google Sheets document.
Select the cell or range of cells to be struck through.

NOTE: You can apply the strikethrough to a single cell, a range of cells, or specific values within a cell.

From the menus, click on Format, a drop-down menu will appear, select the Strikethrough item from the list.

strikethrough-in-Google-Sheets-using-format-dropdown.png

As soon as you select strikethrough from the list, the strikethrough formatting will apply to all the selected cells or values.

Option 4: Using Conditional Formatting (Strikethrough Formula)

If you intend to use a strikethrough to cross out completed tasks or activities in a checklist or to-do list, you might want Google Sheets to do it for you automatically as you enter text in a related cell, such as “completed” or “done”.

The Illustration below, for example, shows a list of tasks you want to complete for the day. The task items are listed in one column, and the status is listed in the next. As you can see, whenever you type “Done” in the Status column, the strikethrough formatting will be applied to the corresponding item in the task column.

You can easily do this with the help of conditional formatting in Google Sheets.

Without any further ado, let’s dive into the steps.

Open your Google Sheets document.
Select the cell or cells you wish to strikethrough via conditional formatting. In this example, it should be all the cells in the task column which is B3 through B9 (B3:B9).
Once the cells are selected, click Format from the menu section, and a drop-down menu will appear, select Conditional formatting from the drop-down items.

You should see the conditional formatting pane appear on the side.

On the conditional formatting pane, click on the drop-down under Format rules.

From the list of rules, scroll to the bottom and select “Custom formula is”. This allows you to insert your own strikethrough formula.

How to add strikethrough formula in the Custom conditional formatting rules

In the value of formula field, enter this formula: =C3=”Done”

In the next section (i.e., Formatting style), click on the strikethrough icon to apply its formatting. If you want to, you can also apply additional formatting (such as Bold, underline, italic, color the font, or add a fill color).
Click on the Done button.

Instead of using text to define a task status, you can also use checkboxes in the status column and base your conditional formatting rule on the value in the cells (TRUE means a checkbox is checked, and FALSE means it is not checked).

As a result, depending on whether the checkbox is selected or not, Google Sheets will automatically strikethrough completed tasks.

(See the screenshot below)

Illustration of using checkbox to strikethrough in Google Sheets

Obey the following steps to achieve this functionality.

Select all the cells that will contain the checkboxes.
Once the cells are selected, click on the Insert tab to display a drop-down list of insertable items. From this list, select the Checkbox item.

This will insert clickable checkboxes to all the selected cells.

Now, to link the strikethrough formatting to these checkboxes, enter this formula as the conditional formatting rule: =$C3=TRUE

And there you have it. A step-by-step guide to creating automatic strikethrough formatting using conditional formatting in Google Sheets.

How To Remove Strikethrough In Google Sheets

The best method to get rid of strikethrough in Google sheets is to follow the same method you used to add it.

Thus, it depends on the process you used when you were adding it.

However, if you didn’t add it via the conditional formatting method, then you can remove it with other methods discussed in this article.

Below are the various ways you may use to remove strikethrough in Google Sheets.

Remove Strikethrough Added via Shortcut

To remove a strikethrough that you’ve added with a shortcut, please follow these simple steps:

Select the cells with values that have the strikethrough formatting.
Once the cells are selected, Press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows / On MacOS, Press Command (⌘) + Shift + X / and On ChromeOS, Press Alt + Shift + 5.
As soon as you press these shortcuts with the cells selected, it should cancel the strikethrough formatting from your document.

Remove Strikethrough Added via the Strikethrough Icon/button in the Menus

To remove the strikethrough that you’ve added with the strikethrough icon, kindly obey the following simple steps:

Select the cells with values that have the strikethrough formatting on them.
Once these cells are selected, go to the Menus and click on the Strikethrough icon.
Another way out is to click on the Format drop-down and select Strikethrough from the list.
This will remove all strikethrough formatting from the selected cells.

Remove Strikethrough Added via the Conditional formatting method

To get rid of strikethrough formatting that you’ve added with conditional formatting, kindly obey the following simple steps:

Select the cells that contain the values that have the strikethrough formatting.
Once you select these cells, go to the Format drop-down menu and click on Clear formatting. This will get rid of all the strikethrough formatting on the cells.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it.

A very comprehensive step-by-step instruction for using strikethrough formatting in Google Sheets.

As you can see in this guide, using the shortcut method is the quickest.

However, using the mouse-based approach can be more convenient at times because you only need to click on the easy-to-access strikethrough icon in the Menus.

The conditional formatting option is only useful when you want to perform strikethrough if certain conditions are met, such as selecting a checkbox or entering a specific text into a cell.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this guide.