How do I get this text box off my excel spreadsheet?

[fuzzybabybunny]

I was copying and pasting values into the spreadsheet and I accidentally pasted in a text input box from the website. Now it won't go away.

1. Can't right click and delete it.
2. Deleting the cell doesn't do anything.
3. Deleting the entire row/column doesn't do anything.
4. Closing and reopening document doesn't do anything.

http://www.victorlinphoto.com/...loads/exceltextbox.JPG

WTF?

 

[bruceb]

Delete a text box

* Click the border of the text box that you want to delete, and then press DELETE.

Make sure that the pointer is not inside the text box, but rather on the border of the text box. If the pointer is not on the border, pressing DELETE will delete the text inside the text box and not the text box.

If that does not work, open up another spreadsheet and copy over the info
from the bad sheet to the new sheet (carefully avoiding the text entry box)

Then save the new spreadsheet. Delete the old one and if needed, rename the new one.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

There is no border to select. It's a really frickin' weird text box. Like the type that you'd find as part of a form on a website.

Anyway, I simply copied all the contents of the spreadsheet and pasted it into a new spreadsheet. The text box thing didn't come along thankfully.

 

[mayest]

I guess it is too late now, but that looks like Excel 2007. You can go to the Page Layout tab and click the Selection Pane button. That will open a sidebar with all of the worksheet shapes. From there you can select any object and then press the delete button to get rid of it.

 

[zacbelle]

I had exact same problem in Excel 2010 and can confirm the page layout tab fix from "mayest" worked. I wasn't able to delete the box but you can make it invisible.

 

[zzoom]

Easy solution here:

http://zzoomforward.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/how-to-remove-text-box-or-any.html

Regards,
Zzoom

 

[Scharfschutzen]

I'm having, what I feel, is a similar issue.

I have, what LOOKS like a comment box containing text on my excel.
It's only view-able when I select certain cells (All the cells selected have the same comment--not sure if it's coincidence or copy/pasta.)

I can move around the "comment" but cannot delete it. Pressing "Delete" on my keyboard clears the cell selected.

Going into design mode yields no results.

Here is an example of the document. I can email it upon request.
Thank you in advanced!

 

[Scharfschutzen]

bump

 

[Zug]

I'm having, what I feel, is a similar issue.

I have, what LOOKS like a comment box containing text on my excel.
It's only view-able when I select certain cells (All the cells selected have the same comment--not sure if it's coincidence or copy/pasta.)

I can move around the "comment" but cannot delete it. Pressing "Delete" on my keyboard clears the cell selected.

Going into design mode yields no results.

Here is an example of the document. I can email it upon request.
Thank you in advanced!

Well, that is a necropost alright, but if someone will run into the same problem: this is Data Validation "thingie". In order to remove it select all cells, that have this feature enabled, go to "Data" tab, click on "Data Validation" button, switch to "Input Message" tab and press "Clear All" and "OK" buttons.

 

[cchristopher]

___________**SOLUTION**____________
If you want to remove them & not hide them:

1. Go to the "Developer" tab.
2. Click on "Design Mode".
3. Select, edit, & delete all the weird stuff.

 

[Aarkain]

Ok, I signed up to this site just to post this link. I get that the original post is over 10 yrs old now, but people are still having the issue. I had it and this thread was the #1 result in a google search. So here are the instructions I found to fix it, and the link to the page I found them on.

1. Click F5 or Ctrl+G to display Go To dialog and click Special
2. Check Objects, and then click Ok, it will select all objects
3. Then click Backspace button to remove all autoshapes.
Note: Objects contain autoshapes, pictures, clip arts and so on. Applying this method will remove other objects besides auto shapes if there are not only autoshapes object in the worksheet.

There was more on the page but, honestly, as these steps fixed my issue I didn't read it. Here's the link to the page with screenshots of the steps.

 

[Raptcat]

Aarkain!
I too joined just to reply to this message. I was desperately searching for how to get these annoying text boxes off my Excel sheet and I saw your solution! It worked!!! Thank you so much for posting on a 10 year old message! In my case, I was working on the same document saved on a cloud account with Excel and OfficeLibre. The boxes appeared after opening the file in Excel after using it in the other program.
Thank you!!!!

 

[Hen2]

I had the same problem and frustrations as "fuzzybabybunny" described. I also had 6 or 7 legit objects on my Excel sheet that I needed to keep. Using the steps 1 & 2 from the "Aarkain" method and adding to it before deleting, I was able to save my legit objects as well as delete the unwanted box. My legit objects were from various other documents and would have taking a lot of time to re-assemble.
1. F5 to open Go To dialog box
2. Click "Special" to see Select Menu
3. Check "Objects" box - (all such objects on original document are selected and Go To dialog box will close)
4. Click "Cut" button (placing all selected objects on clipboard)
5. Open a new blank sheet and "Paste" selected objects
6. Left click mouse to release all selected objects now on the blank sheet
7. Re-select legit objects [one by one or use 'Ctrl+Shift' to gather all at once]
8. Click "Cut" and go back to your original document and "Paste" your legit objects
9. On the blank sheet, only the unwanted object remains, so you can "Delete" the blank sheet

 

[jabconsl]

___________**SOLUTION**____________
If you want to remove them & not hide them:

1. Go to the "Developer" tab.
2. Click on "Design Mode".
3. Select, edit, & delete all the weird stuff.

Worked perfect solution, Thanks

 

[redheama]

Per cchristopher:
Go to the "Developer" tab.
Click on "Design Mode".
Select, edit, & delete all the weird stuff.

When I tried Aarkain's solution, I received a message: No objects found.

If you don't have the "Developer" tab, one quick option is to HIDE the boxes: choose the SELECTION PANE (both under HOME>Editing>Find & Select dropdown OR under PAGE LAYOUT>ARRANGE TAB>choose SELECTION PANE).

If you want to Hide all of these boxes scroll to the bottom of the SELECTION AND VISIBILITY box and choose HIDE ALL.

If you have time and want to permanently remove these HTML text boxes and don't have the "Developer" tab, you can ADD the DESIGN MODE button as well as another useful button for removing these HTML text boxes by adding these buttons onto your QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR so that they'll always be available to your future excel documents.

You may not realize there are hundreds of tasks that can be done in excel or don't know where or how to find them, they are neatly tucked into the MORE COMMANDS... dialog box (which can be accessed by choosing the dropdown button on the QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR and choosing MORE COMMANDS...

Under Choose commands from: press the dropdown arrow and select ALL COMMANDS
Scroll down and click on DESIGN MODE click: ADD
Scroll down further and click on: SELECT MULTIPLE OBJECTS click: ADD
Click OK to close dialog box

You can now remove the HTML Text Object boxes, just click on the DESIGN MODE button. If you only have a couple of these boxes, you can click on them and delete them (or CTRL + click on them to delete multiple items).

If you have a lot of these HTML Text Objects (after clicking the DESIGN MODE button), click the SELECT MULTIPLE OBJECTS button. You can either click the objects to be removed, or select all and this will select them all and you can simply press the delete button (you may want to scroll up and down the document to ensure you're only selecting the objects you want to remove). If there are other objects needed, simply press Ctrl and click on the needed objects, this will deselect them and you can now press delete to remove the remaining objects.

I know this seems like a lot, but if this occurs from time to time for you (if you copy text from the internet), you've already added these two buttons so it's quick and easy from this point on.