How to Remove Fill Color in Excel & Google Sheets

This article will demonstrate how to remove the fill color in a cell in Excel and Google Sheets.

There are a number of ways you can remove the fill color in a cell or a range of cells in Excel and Google Sheets.

Cell Format

1. Highlight the cell or cells where you want the fill color removed.

2. In the Ribbon, select Home >Font > Fill Color > No Fill.

The background colors will be removed from the selected cells.

Format Painter

The Format Painter is useful in copying cell format from one cell to another.   To remove the fill color of a cell, we can click on a cell that does not have a fill color, and then click on a cell or cells where we want the fill color removed.

1. First, (1) Select a blank cell and then  (2) in the Ribbon, select Home > Clipboard > Format Painter.

2. Click in the cell or highlight the cells where you wish the fill color to be removed.

3. Release your mouse to remove the fill color from the cells.

4. If we want to click on each cell individually to remove the background color using Format Painter, we can double-click on the Format Painter button to switch it on.

5. We can then click on each individual cell or cells to remove the fill color of each of the cells.

The format painter will remain active until such time as we click once again in the Ribbon on the Format Painter button to switch it off.

How to Remove Fill Color in Google Sheets

We can apply both of the methods that we have detailed above in Google Sheets to remove the fill color in a cell.

1. Highlight the cells you wish to remove the fill color from, and then, in the Toolbar, select Fill color.

2. Select Reset.

The fill color will be removed from all the selected cells.

Google sheets also has a Paint format option which is equivalent to the Excel Format Painter.

1. In your worksheet, (1) select a blank cell and then (2) in the toolbar, select Paint format.  Finally, (3) highlight the cells whose fill color you want to remove.

 

2. Release your mouse button to show the results.

Note: Double-clicking on Paint format does not work in Google Sheets.