{"id":64992,"date":"2026-09-01T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T12:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/?p=64992"},"modified":"2026-09-01T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T12:11:10","slug":"i-typed-three-semicolons-into-excel-and-found-its-strangest-formatting-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/i-typed-three-semicolons-into-excel-and-found-its-strangest-formatting-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"I typed three semicolons into Excel and found its strangest formatting trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I typed three semicolons into Excel and found its strangest formatting trick<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/typed-three-semicolons-into-excel-found-strangest-formatting-trick\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/typed-three-semicolons-into-excel-found-strangest-formatting-trick\/<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A custom number format has four slots<br \/>\nLeave every one of them empty, and Excel draws nothing<\/li>\n<li>Formulas still read the hidden value<br \/>\nBlanking the display never touches the data underneath<\/li>\n<li>This beats hiding columns or turning the font white<br \/>\nBoth of the obvious workarounds fail in ways this one does not<\/li>\n<li>It hides the number, but it does not hide much else<br \/>\nWhere three semicolons stop being enough<\/li>\n<li>Where I would take this next<br \/>\nThe display layer is worth using on purpose<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I typed three semicolons into Excel and found its strangest formatting trick https:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/typed-three-semicolons-into-excel-found-strangest-formatting-trick\/ A custom number format has four slots Leave every one of them empty, and Excel draws nothing Formulas still read the hidden value Blanking the display never touches the data underneath This beats hiding columns or turning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excel","category-excel-office-2010"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-13 12:38:27","action":"delete","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hlrnet.com\/technoblog\/inicio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}