How to Use Paste Special Skip Blanks in Microsoft Excel

You can use Skip Blanks feature in Paste Special when you do not want these blank cells get copied to existing values. Most of the excel users are aware of Paste Special command (copy formulas & then convert them into values or copy & paste using Transpose) but there are very less number of people who are using Skip Blanks.

It is a useful built in feature in excel that can save a lot of time. This feature is mostly used while we are importing data in excel workbook.
Let us take an example:

We have values in column B. There are some values in column Athat we want to copy & overwrite existing values but we do not want blank cells to be copied to column A

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  • Select the range A2:A12
  • Copy the selected range & right click on cell B2
  • Click on Paste Special

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  • The Paste Special dialog box will appear
  • Check the box “Skip blanks”

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  • Click on OK
  • You will see the data is copied to cells in column B without overwriting existing values with blanks.

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If you have to perform this task to large amount of data manually then I can assure you that chances of making errors are pretty high whereas after learning this tip you can perform this task with an ease with accuracy.

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