Strikethrough in Excel does one thing well: it crosses out text without deleting it. That crossed-out look — a horizontal line drawn through the middle of a cell's content — is surprisingly useful for tracking progress, flagging deprecated data, or building simple task lists directly inside a spreadsheet.

The catch? Excel buries strikethrough. There's no button on the Home ribbon by default. New users often hunt through menus for several minutes before giving up. You've got four reliable ways to get it done, and the fastest takes exactly one keyboard combo: Ctrl+5.

This guide walks through every method — from that quick shortcut to conditional formatting that automatically strikes out rows when a condition is true. You'll also learn how to apply strikethrough to just part of a cell's text, remove it easily, and use it in Excel for the Web. No VBA required for the core features — though we'll cover when VBA makes sense too.

What Is Strikethrough — and When Should You Use It?

Strikethrough is a text formatting style that draws a horizontal line through the middle of text. In Excel, you apply it to a cell (or part of a cell) to visually show that the content is completed, outdated, or deprioritized — without erasing the data.

Common use cases include:

• To-do lists inside spreadsheets — cross out tasks as you finish them instead of deleting rows
• Marking deprecated items — flag old SKUs, expired pricing, or replaced formula versions
• Project tracking — pair with conditional formatting in Excel to auto-strike rows when status equals "Done"
• Price displays — show original vs. discounted prices with the original crossed out
• Revision tracking — keep old values visible with a line through them so collaborators see what changed

Unlike deleting, strikethrough preserves the underlying data. You and your collaborators can still read what was there — it's just visually marked as no longer active. That distinction matters more than it sounds in shared workbooks.

Method 1: The Ctrl+5 Keyboard Shortcut

This is the one you'll use 90% of the time. Select one or more cells, then press Ctrl+5. Excel toggles strikethrough on. Press Ctrl+5 again and it toggles off. Dead simple.

Why 5? Older Excel versions mapped formatting shortcuts to the number row: Ctrl+1 opens Format Cells, Ctrl+2 is bold, Ctrl+3 italic, Ctrl+4 underline, Ctrl+5 strikethrough. The numbering has stayed consistent across Excel versions for decades, so you'll find it works the same whether you're on Excel 2010 or Microsoft 365.

The shortcut works across a range of selection types:

• A single cell
• Multi-cell selections (hold Shift or Ctrl while clicking to select multiple)
• Entire rows or columns — click the row/column header to select, then Ctrl+5
• Non-contiguous ranges — hold Ctrl while clicking individual cells, then apply the shortcut

One thing to watch: if your selection mixes cells with and without strikethrough, Excel applies strikethrough to all of them on the first press. The second press removes it from all. It's an all-or-nothing toggle across the selection — not a per-cell decision.

Method 2: Format Cells Dialog

If you prefer menus — or you're applying strikethrough alongside other font changes — the Format Cells dialog gives you full control in one place. It takes a few more clicks than Ctrl+5, but it's useful when you're doing bulk formatting and want to see a live preview before committing.

Steps:

1. Select the cell(s) you want to format.
2. Press Ctrl+1 to open the Format Cells dialog. You can also right-click the selection and choose Format Cells, or go to Home → Font group → click the tiny arrow in the bottom-right corner of that group.
3. Click the Font tab at the top of the dialog.
4. Under the Effects section, check the Strikethrough box.
5. Review the preview at the bottom of the dialog — it shows exactly how your text will look.
6. Click OK.

The Format Cells dialog also lets you stack multiple formatting changes in one step. Change font color, size, bold, and strikethrough all at once, then click OK once instead of hitting four separate shortcuts. If you're reformatting a finished table or doing end-of-day task marking, the dialog is faster overall even if each individual step feels slower.

Method 3: Add Strikethrough to the Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar — the small bar above or below the ribbon with save, undo, and redo — can hold any command you want, including strikethrough. Once added, it becomes a persistent one-click button that's always visible regardless of which ribbon tab you're on.

Setup steps:

1. Click File → Options → Quick Access Toolbar.
2. In the "Choose commands from" dropdown, select All Commands.
3. Scroll the alphabetical list to find Strikethrough.
4. Click Add to move it to your QAT list on the right.
5. Click OK.

You'll now see an S̶ button in your QAT. Click it to toggle strikethrough — no keyboard required. This setup persists across sessions, so you only do it once. If you manage spreadsheets with ongoing task lists, this is worth the 90-second one-time setup.

Note: you can also right-click any ribbon command and choose "Add to Quick Access Toolbar" as a shortcut — but since strikethrough isn't on the ribbon by default, you'll need the Options route here.

Method 4: Customize the Ribbon

Excel's Home ribbon doesn't include a strikethrough button by default. You can add one — but it takes more steps than the QAT approach. Unless you have a strong preference for the ribbon over the toolbar, QAT is simpler and faster to set up.

To add strikethrough to the ribbon: right-click anywhere on the ribbon → Customize the Ribbon. You'll need to create a new custom group first (Excel doesn't let you add commands to its own built-in groups). Once you've created a group within the Home tab or another tab, find Strikethrough in the commands list and add it to your custom group.

The main advantage of the ribbon method over QAT is that ribbon buttons can be labeled with text, making them more visible in a shared workbook context. If you're building a template for collaborators who aren't Excel power users, a clearly labeled ribbon button is friendlier than an unlabeled QAT icon they won't recognize. That self-documenting quality is worth the extra setup time in team environments.

Conditional Formatting Strikethrough

Here's where strikethrough gets genuinely powerful. Instead of manually crossing out cells, you make Excel do it automatically when a condition is true.

A common scenario: you have a task list where column A contains task names and column B has a status dropdown. When column B = "Done", you want the entire row to show strikethrough. Set this up once with conditional formatting in Excel and it runs itself forever.

How to build the rule:

1. Select the range you want the strikethrough to apply to — e.g., A2:C50 for a 50-row task table.
2. Go to Home → Conditional Formatting → New Rule.
3. Choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format.
4. Enter a formula. For the above example: =$B2="Done". The dollar sign before B locks the column — so Excel always checks column B — but the row number stays free so the rule evaluates row by row.
5. Click Format → go to the Font tab → check Strikethrough → OK.
6. Optionally, set the font color to gray too, so completed rows look faded and less visually dominant.
7. Click OK to apply the rule.

Now whenever someone types "Done" in column B, that row gets automatically crossed out. Change the status back and the strikethrough disappears. No macros, no manual formatting.

This pairs naturally with the IF function in Excel if you're auto-calculating status based on dates or other values rather than typing it manually. For example: =IF(C2<TODAY(),"Done","Pending") in column B would auto-mark past-deadline tasks as Done — and the conditional formatting rule would strike them out.

One genuine limitation: conditional formatting strikethrough isn't easy to filter or count. Excel's built-in filter doesn't recognize conditional formatting as a filter criterion. If you need to count or filter completed items, track that state in a data column and use COUNTIF or the Excel SUM formula approach — not visual formatting.

Applying Strikethrough to Part of a Cell's Text

Most formatting in Excel applies to the entire cell. Strikethrough is one of the few formats you can apply to individual characters — but you need to enter edit mode first.

Here's how to do it:

1. Double-click the cell to enter edit mode. Alternatively, press F2 with the cell selected.
2. Select just the characters you want crossed out. Click and drag with your mouse, or use Shift+Arrow keys to extend the selection character by character.
3. Press Ctrl+5. Only the selected characters get strikethrough — the rest of the cell stays untouched.

This works for things like price displays (showing ~~$199~~ $149 in a single cell), version notes, or any situation where partial crossed-out text communicates more than crossing out the whole cell. Think of a changelog cell that reads "Version 1.2" struck through next to "Version 2.0" — two data points, one cell, zero confusion about which is current.

The same approach works with the Format Cells dialog: enter edit mode, select the characters, open Ctrl+1, check Strikethrough. Either route works — Ctrl+5 is just faster once your characters are selected.

Worth knowing: partial cell formatting is purely visual. Excel formulas referencing that cell still see the complete text value — the strikethrough doesn't affect the data, only how it's displayed. Don't try to build logic around it. If you need to test whether a word or phrase is current, put that flag in a separate column, not in the formatting of another cell.

How to Remove Strikethrough

Removing strikethrough is exactly as easy as adding it — same methods, reverse action. Pick whichever matches how you applied it.

• Keyboard shortcut: select the cell, press Ctrl+5. If the cell has strikethrough, this removes it. The shortcut is a pure toggle.
• Format Cells dialog: Ctrl+1 → Font tab → uncheck Strikethrough → OK.
• QAT button: if you added strikethrough to your toolbar, clicking it on a strikethrough-formatted cell removes the formatting immediately.
• Clear Formats: Home → Editing group → Clear → Clear Formats. This removes all cell formatting — strikethrough, bold, font color, everything. Use it only when you want a full reset on the cell.

For conditional formatting strikethrough, pressing Ctrl+5 won't do anything — the formatting comes from a rule, not direct cell properties. The rule overrides manual formatting in many cases. To remove it, go to Home → Conditional Formatting → Manage Rules, find your rule, and delete or modify it there.

Strikethrough in Excel for the Web

Excel Online supports strikethrough natively, and Ctrl+5 works there too. Select the cell and hit Ctrl+5 — same as the desktop version, same result.

The menu approach in Excel Online: go to Format → Cells → Font → check Strikethrough. The ribbon layout looks a bit different from the desktop app, but the Font dialog is essentially identical.

One limitation in the browser version: deep QAT customization isn't available. The Quick Access Toolbar exists but you can't add arbitrary commands the way you can in the desktop app. For Excel Online users, Ctrl+5 is the go-to. Memorize it once and you're set.

Conditional formatting strikethrough works in Excel Online too — same formula-based approach, nearly identical interface. If you set up a rule in the desktop app, it carries over automatically when you open the file in a browser. The rules live in the file itself, not in the app.

Finding and Counting Cells with Strikethrough

Excel doesn't have a built-in filter for strikethrough. You can't open the filter dropdown and ask it to show only crossed-out rows. That's a real gap — and it catches a lot of users off guard when they try to analyze a task list they've been managing with strikethrough.

Your practical options:

• Find and Replace: press Ctrl+H, click Options → Format → Font tab → check Strikethrough. Excel finds (and optionally replaces) cells with that exact formatting. Not a count, but useful for locating them quickly.
• VBA custom function: write a function that checks Cell.Font.Strikethrough and returns TRUE or FALSE. Use that output column with COUNTIF. Works, but adds code overhead and maintenance complexity.
• Track state in a column: this is the best long-term approach. Use a dedicated status column — "Done", "Pending", "In Progress" — and drive strikethrough via conditional formatting from that column. Then use COUNTIF or the Excel SUM formula on the status column to count completed items automatically. The visual and the data stay in sync without any VBA.

The data-column approach makes your spreadsheet far more extensible. Want to multiply completed quantities by price? The multiply in Excel formulas work on actual values — not formatting states. And if you want users to update status with one click rather than typing text — which cuts down errors in shared workbooks — you can set that up by learning how to create a dropdown in Excel. Status dropdowns plus conditional formatting is a genuinely powerful combo for project tracking.