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MS Excel 2011 for Mac: Copy and paste only nonblank cells (condensing paste range)

This Excel tutorial explains how to copy and paste only nonblank cells by condensing a paste range in Excel 2011 for Mac (with screenshots and step-by-step instructions).

Question: In Microsoft Excel 2011 for Mac, how do I copy the entries of a series of cells and paste only non-blank cells? Paste special then skip blank option doesn't seem to work.

Answer: Unfortunately, there isn't a simple solution to this question. The following example demonstrates how to copy and paste only nonblank cells.

First, highlight all of the cells (including both blank and nonblank cells) that you wish to paste. In this example, we've highlighted cells A1 to A8.

Next, select the Data tab in the toolbar at the top of the screen and click on the Filter button (see gray highlighted button in picture below).

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A drop-down should appear in the first cell of your range. Click on this drop-down.

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De-select the (Blanks) option and then click on the X in the top left of the popup menu.

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Your spreadsheet should now only display nonblank cells.

Next, copy the data using Command-C.

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Then paste the data using Command-V. In this example, we've chosen to paste the nonblank cells into Sheet2.

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