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You are here: Home / Google Drive / How to Remove Background Color from Cells in Google Sheets

How to Remove Background Color from Cells in Google Sheets

posted on April 23, 2019

Many people that create spreadsheets in programs like Excel and Google Sheets use different formatting options to either draw attention to certain pieces of data, or to make the data easier to read.

One common formatting choice is background color, or fill color. By adding a background color to certain columns, rows, or types of cells, you can create a way to associate certain cells with other cells. Some people will go really overboard with this and add background color to every cell in a spreadsheet. While this can be useful in some situations, you may eventually find that background color to be incorrect, distracting, or unnecessary. Fortunately you can quickly remove background color from cells in Google Sheets by following the steps below.

How to Clear Fill Color from Cells in Google Sheets

The steps in this article were performed in the desktop version of Google Chrome, but will also work in other desktop browsers like Edge or Firefox.

Step 1: Sign into your Google Drive at https://drive.google.com and open the file containing the background color that you wish to remove.

Step 2: Select the cells from which to clear the background color.

select cells with background color

Step 3: Click the Fill color button in the toolbar above the spreadsheet.

click the fill color button

Step 4: Click the Reset button.

how to remove background color from cells in google sheets

There are a ton of ways that you can format data and cells in Google Sheets. Find out how to use strikethrough, for example, if you want to indicate that data should be ignored, but you don’t want to remove it from the spreadsheet.

Matthew Burleigh
Matthew Burleigh

Matthew Burleigh has been a freelance writer since the early 2000s. You can find his writing all over the Web, where his content has collectively been read millions of times.

Matthew received his Master’s degree in Computer Science, then spent over a decade as an IT consultant for small businesses before focusing on writing and website creation.

The topics he covers for MasterYourTech.com include iPhones, Microsoft Office, and Google Apps.

You can read his full bio here.

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