Hiding Formulas and ugly calculations

Sometimes we have numbers in our spreadsheets that we don’t necessarily want viewers to see, maybe they're subjective or used in calculation of sensitive information.

We sometimes need to use them in calculations but need to be able to hide them. Look below for a custom format that will hide your input but keep it available for calculations. If you want to completely hide the calculation you'd have to do some additional locking down of Excel. As the formula will still be visible in the formula bar. (I will cover this in a future blog post)

The custom format is simply ;;;

To apply the format simply highlight the cells that you want to apply it to and hit ctrl+1, this will bring up the cell format menu.

Then go down to “Custom” on the “Number” tab, and enter ;;;.

Hit enter, then you’re done.