How to Do Strikethrough in Excel

Short answer first: press Ctrl+5 on Windows or Command+Shift+X on Mac. That toggles strikethrough on whatever cell or text you've selected. Done. If you just needed the shortcut and nothing else, you can close this tab now and get back to work.

Still here? Good. Because that's only one method. There are six in total, and which one you reach for depends on what you're actually trying to do. Mark a single completed task? Use the shortcut. Strikethrough an entire row automatically when a column says "Done"? You'll need conditional formatting. Toggle strikethrough across 4,000 rows from a button click? That's a VBA macro. Need struck-through text that survives copy-paste into Slack or Gmail? You need the Unicode combining character trick. This guide covers every approach with screenshots, step-by-step instructions, and real workflow examples.

Here's the thing — Excel hides strikethrough surprisingly well. It's not on the Home ribbon by default, which is wild considering bold, italic, and underline all sit right there in plain sight. Microsoft tucked the strikethrough toggle inside the Format Cells dialog instead, so unless you know the shortcut, you're hunting through menus every time you need it. Hundreds of millions of Excel users worldwide, and most of them have never learned the shortcut. They click around for 30 seconds every single time.

Fair warning before we start: Excel Online handles strikethrough differently than desktop Excel. The Ctrl+5 shortcut doesn't work in the browser version — the browser intercepts it. You have to click Home → Strikethrough button on the ribbon instead. That trips up people who switch between desktop and web versions throughout the day. The Strikethrough button does exist in Excel Online, but it's tucked into the Font group with no obvious visual prominence.

Mobile Excel is its own thing too. On iPad or iPhone, you long-press a cell to bring up the format menu, then tap the "abc" with a line through it. Android works the same way. No keyboard shortcut exists for mobile Excel — you have to use the menu every time, or set up a Quick Access entry if your version supports it. The mobile workflow is slow enough that most people just toggle strikethrough on the desktop when they get back to their computer.

This guide walks through all six desktop methods, the workarounds for Excel Online and mobile, how to remove strikethrough (it toggles, but there's a catch with conditional rules), how to apply strikethrough to just part of a cell's text, and real use cases — to-do lists, deprecated entries, audit trails, deleted-but-archived records, contract markup. By the end, you'll never hunt through Format Cells for strikethrough again. You'll also know which method to reach for based on the workflow, not just what you remember.

Quick context on what strikethrough actually is. It draws a horizontal line through the middle of text — like the character with a line through it in markdown. The character itself is U+0336 (combining long stroke overlay) in Unicode, which matters for one weird workaround we'll cover at the end.

Visually it tells readers: "this used to be here, it's been removed or completed, but I want you to see what was there." That's different from deleting the row entirely, and it's a different signal than greyed-out text. Strikethrough has a specific meaning in business documents, contracts, and edit-tracked workflows that no other formatting style conveys.

Method 1 — Keyboard Shortcut (Ctrl+5 / Cmd+Shift+X)

This is the only method most people ever need. Select a cell, press Ctrl+5 on Windows or Command+Shift+X on Mac, and strikethrough turns on. Press the same combo again — it turns off. That's it. The whole reason this article exists is that Microsoft never put a Strikethrough button on the default Home ribbon, so this shortcut is the only fast way to get to it.

The shortcut works on a single cell, a range, or non-contiguous selections. Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) while clicking to pick scattered cells, then hit the shortcut once. Every selected cell gets strikethrough at the same time. No need to repeat it per cell. This scales: select 2,000 rows, press Ctrl+5, and every row gets the formatting in under a second. The shortcut also works inside merged cells, named ranges, and table objects without any extra steps.

You can also strikethrough specific characters inside a cell. Double-click the cell to enter edit mode (or press F2), drag-select the characters you want to strike, then press Ctrl+5. Only those characters get the line — the rest stay normal. Useful for marking partial completions: "Email draft sent" where only "draft" gets the line through it. This is the only way to get partial-cell strikethrough — the shortcut won't apply it to partial text unless you're in edit mode first.

One gotcha on Mac: the default Cmd+Shift+X overlaps with some browser extensions and clipboard managers. If the shortcut isn't working, check System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts and see if anything else captured it. You can rebind Excel's strikethrough to a different combo there too. Common conflict apps: Alfred, Raycast, and several password managers all grab Cmd+Shift+X by default. Disable in those apps or rebind in Excel — whichever you use less often.

Method 2 — Format Cells Dialog (Ctrl+1)

When the shortcut fails or you want a visual preview, use the dialog. Select the cell, press Ctrl+1, click the Font tab, and tick the Strikethrough checkbox under the Effects section. Click OK. Done. The dialog also exposes superscript and subscript checkboxes right next to Strikethrough — handy if you need scientific notation or footnote markers in the same cells you're formatting.

This is the only way to apply strikethrough alongside other font effects in one operation — say, strikethrough plus a different color plus a custom font size. The dialog previews the change before you commit, which the shortcut doesn't do. Helpful when you're formatting a presentation and need to see exactly how it'll look first. The preview panel in the dialog's lower-right corner shows your selected text with all current effects applied. Useful sanity check before clicking OK on a 5,000-cell range.

Pro tip: the Format Cells dialog remembers your last-used tab. If you were on Number formatting earlier, Ctrl+1 reopens to Number, not Font. You'll need an extra click. Compared to Ctrl+5 — which is one keypress and done — the dialog method is genuinely slower for repeat strikethrough work. Reserve it for the cases where you genuinely need the preview or the combined formatting operation. For everything else, learn the shortcut and save the dialog for complex multi-effect formatting.

If you're learning more spreadsheet shortcuts, the keyboard shortcut to delete row in excel follows a similar Ctrl pattern. Excel power users typically memorize 10–15 of these combos and never touch the menus. The time savings compound: shaving 5 seconds off a formatting action 50 times a day is 4 minutes daily, which adds up to nearly 17 hours over a working year. Worth the muscle-memory investment.

Method 5 — VBA Macro for Bulk Strikethrough

When you need strikethrough across thousands of rows triggered by a button click, VBA is the answer. Press Alt+F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor, insert a new module (Insert → Module), and paste this one-line macro: Sub ToggleStrike() Selection.Font.Strikethrough = Not Selection.Font.Strikethrough End Sub. That's the entire program. Three lines of code, including the boilerplate Sub and End Sub wrappers. It does exactly what Ctrl+5 does, just from a macro you can call however you want.

That tiny macro toggles strikethrough on whatever's selected. Bind it to a button (Developer tab → Insert → Button) or assign a keyboard shortcut via Developer → Macros → Options. Now you've got a custom Strike button that works the same as Ctrl+5 but can be triggered from a worksheet button — useful for shared dashboards where users don't know shortcuts. The button stays embedded in the workbook; anyone who opens the file can click it without learning anything new. Just enable macros when the security prompt appears.

For a smarter version that strikes through completed tasks based on a status column, write a For Each loop that iterates through your range and sets Font.Strikethrough based on the offset cell's value. For example: cell.Font.Strikethrough = (cell.Offset(0, 1).Value = "Done"). This compares each row's status column and applies strikethrough only where the status matches. Loop through A2:A1000 with this logic and the entire list updates from a single button click.

Conditional formatting does the same thing automatically, but VBA gives you control — you can layer additional logic, log changes to a hidden sheet, send email notifications when items get marked done, or trigger the formatting only at specific events like file save. Excel power users often go this route. If you're comfortable with macros, the excel vba reference covers more of these patterns. VBA is overkill for one-off strikethrough work but indispensable for repeated, scheduled, or event-driven formatting across large workbooks.

Method 6 — Unicode Combining Character (Niche Workaround)

Here's a weird one. You can fake strikethrough using the Unicode combining long stroke overlay character (U+0336). Append it to every character of a string, and the result looks struck-through even in plain text apps that don't support font formatting. The character itself is invisible — it overlays on top of whatever character comes before it. Type "abc" then U+0336 after each letter, and you get text that looks like it has a line through it everywhere it travels.

Excel formula approach: build a helper formula that loops through each character and concatenates UNICHAR(822) after it. Cleaner is a VBA function that takes a string and returns the same string with the combining stroke baked in. The result survives copy-paste to Slack, Discord, Gmail, anywhere — because the strikethrough is baked into the text itself as actual characters, not applied as a font effect that gets stripped on copy.

Worth knowing: this method is bulletproof for export but ugly in spreadsheets, since you're doubling the character count and the text looks weird in Excel's normal font rendering. Don't use it for normal Excel work — reach for it only when you need struck-through text to travel out of Excel intact. To-do list apps, email subject lines, social media bios, anywhere font effects get stripped during copy-paste. Niche use case, but the only solution when you need it.

Removing Strikethrough (And Why Toggle Sometimes Fails)

Removing strikethrough is the same shortcut: Ctrl+5 (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+X (Mac). It toggles. Select the struck-through cell, press the combo, line gone. Works on ranges, partial cell text, the whole sheet if you Ctrl+A first. This is the cleanest case — direct formatting applied via the shortcut comes off via the shortcut. Nothing fancy needed.

One thing trips people up: if the strikethrough was applied via conditional formatting, Ctrl+5 won't remove it. The rule keeps reapplying it. You have to go to Home → Conditional Formatting → Manage Rules, find the rule, and either delete it or change the formula condition so it no longer matches the cell. That's the number-one "why won't strikethrough turn off" support question on every Excel forum. People press Ctrl+5 ten times wondering why nothing's happening. The rule fires faster than the toggle.

Same for VBA-applied strikethrough — Ctrl+5 toggles it once, but if you re-run the macro it comes back. The fix is either editing the macro or temporarily disabling the trigger that runs it. Direct font formatting applied via Ctrl+5 or Format Cells is the easiest to undo; conditional and VBA strikethrough need source-level changes. Always check what method was used before assuming the toggle is broken. If pressing Ctrl+5 produces no visible change at all, that's a strong signal it's conditional formatting underneath.

Partial Cell Strikethrough — Only Some Characters

Sometimes you want strikethrough on part of a cell's text, not the whole cell. Example: "Email draft sent" where only "draft" gets the line. Or contract markup where one specific clause is struck out while the rest stays. This is a real workflow in legal and editorial contexts where you want to show what was removed without actually removing it.

Steps: Double-click the cell (or press F2) to enter edit mode. Drag-select the characters you want to strike. Press Ctrl+5 or open Format Cells (Ctrl+1) and tick Strikethrough on the Font tab. Only the selected characters get the line. Press Enter to commit. The partial formatting persists when you copy the cell, save the file, or share the workbook — it's stored as rich text within the cell. This survives copy-paste into another Excel cell, but it gets stripped if you paste into a plain-text app.

This only works in edit mode. If you select the whole cell from outside edit mode and press Ctrl+5, the entire cell gets struck through — you can't strike partial text by selection alone. F2 is the gatekeeper. Forgetting this step is the most common reason people think Excel doesn't support partial strikethrough. It does. You just have to enter the cell first.

Real Use Cases for Strikethrough

Where strikethrough actually shines: to-do lists where you want to keep completed items visible but visually de-prioritized; deprecated entries like old prices, old contact info, old products you still want in the archive but flagged as outdated; deleted-but-kept records for audit trails where you can't actually delete a row but want to mark it removed for compliance; version-tracked documents where edits show old values struck through next to new ones; contract markup where lawyers strike specific clauses during negotiation.

Practical Tips for Strikethrough in Real Workflows

Strikethrough alone often isn't enough. Pair it with a grey font color for completed to-do items — that pushes them visually into the background without hiding them. Right-click a completed cell, choose Format Cells, set font color to grey (#808080 or lighter), and strikethrough together. Two clicks of muscle memory, massive UX win. The combined effect tells your eye "this is done" without making the row disappear entirely. Same logic applies to deprecated price lists, removed product SKUs, or archived contacts.

For dynamic dashboards, combine conditional strikethrough with conditional row hiding via a filter. Mark rows "Done" → strikethrough applies → filter to hide completed rows when the list gets long. The strikethrough is your visual marker; the filter is your decluttering tool. Both rely on the same status column. You can also use a slicer for one-click toggling between "show all" and "show open only" — handy for shared task boards where some team members want to see history and others want to focus on remaining work.

Pivot tables don't display strikethrough from source data. If you strikethrough a row in your raw data and then build a pivot, the pivot shows clean text — no line. Workaround: add a status column to your pivot ("Done" / "Pending") and conditionally format the pivot itself. Tedious but it's the only way Excel handles formatting flow into pivots. If you're newer to pivots, the excel pivot tables guide explains the underlying mechanics and why source-data formatting is intentionally separated from pivot rendering.

Print preview matters too. Strikethrough prints fine on most printers, but really old monochrome lasers sometimes render the line so faintly it's invisible on the printout. Always print a test page if strikethrough is critical to the document's meaning — a printed contract showing struck-through clauses needs to look struck through on paper, not just on screen. PDF export has the same risk: some PDF viewers render strikethrough thinner than Excel's preview suggests. Test the full pipeline before sending anything important.

For shared workbooks where multiple people edit the same task list, conditional strikethrough beats manual every time. Manual strikethrough requires whoever marks "Done" to remember Ctrl+5; conditional strikethrough fires automatically based on the status column. Less training, fewer missed formats, more consistent visual output. The setup takes five minutes once, then it's bulletproof. New team members don't need to learn the shortcut — they just type "Done" in column B and the row strikes through itself.

Bottom line: pick the method that matches the workflow. Quick one-off marks → Ctrl+5. Repeating dashboard task lists → conditional formatting. Thousands of rows on a button click → VBA. Export struck-through text to other apps → Unicode combining character. Multiple effects in one shot → Format Cells dialog. Permanent one-click access → Quick Access Toolbar button. Six methods, one shortcut to remember as your default, and you're set for every Excel strikethrough scenario you'll ever face.