Editing cell contents in excel

There are different ways to edit data in a cell.

• Edit the cell’s contents.
• Delete the cell’s contents.
• Replace the cell’s contents with something else.

Editing the contents of a cell

If you want to make any change in the existing data in a cell, you can edit cell data. When you want to edit the contents of a cell you can use one of the following ways to enter cell- edit mode:

• Double- click the cell to edit the cell contents directly in the cell and it will enable the edit mode
• Select the cell and  press F2 to edit the cell contents.
• Select the cell that you want to edit and then click inside the formula bar to edit the cell contents in the formula bar.

All the above mentioned method will allow you to edit data in the cell.
You can use whichever method you prefer. When you enter in to edit mode, status bar will show the status as “Edit” in the bottom of the screen.

When Excel is in edit mode, the formula bar enables two icon:  Cancel and Enter.  Below figure shows these two ikons. Clicking the cancel icon cancels editing without changing the cell’s contents. Clicking the enter icon completes the editing and enters the modified contents into the cell.

By pressing home key you can move the insertion  point to the beginning of the cell, by pressing End Key you can move the insertion point  to the end of the cell

Deleting the contents of a cell

To delete the contents of a cell, just click the cell and  press the delete key.  To delete more than one cell, select a range of cells that you want to delete and then press Delete.  Pressing delete removes the cell’s contents but doesn't delete cells and any formatting applied to the cell.

The other way to delete the contents of cell with more options is to choose Home>Clear command.

This will give five options like Clear all, Clear formats, Clear contents, Clear comments, Clear hyperlinks.

Replacing the contents of a cell

You can replace the contents of the cell by just selecting a cell and entering the data, which will replace the existing data. This will not change any formatting of the cell. The cell content can also be replaced by drag and drop or by pasting data from the clipboard.  In both cases, the cell formatting will be replaced by the format of the new data.