Make word crossed out

Things You Should Know

• The strikethrough option is located in the Home tab at the top of Word.
• You can apply a double-line strikethrough using the Font panel’s additional options.
• To remove a strikethrough, highlight the text and click the strikethrough icon. Alternatively, select ‘Clear Formatting’ to remove it.

1. 

   1

   Highlight the text you want to strike out. You can do this by clicking and dragging the mouse cursor over the word or phrase.

   • Although there is no keyboard shortcut for striking through text, it’ll only take a few seconds to apply the formatting.

2. 

   2

   Click the Home tab. If you’re not already on the Home tab, you’ll need to click Home at the top of Word to go there now.

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3. 

   3

   Click the strikethrough icon. This icon looks like «

   ab

   » (or «

   abc

   » in some versions) with a horizontal line through both letters. You’ll see it up near the rest of your font options, such as the options to make words bold and italic. Clicking this icon will cross out all selected text.

   • To remove the strikethrough effect, highlight the word or phrase again, and then click the ab icon.

4. 

   4

   Apply double-line strikethrough (optional). If you want to cross out the selected word or phrase with two lines instead of one, you can use the double-line strikethrough effect.^[1]
   Here’s how:

   • With the word or phrase highlighted, click the small down-arrow on the «Font» panel at the top of the screen.
   • Check the box next to «Double strikethrough.»
   • Click OK.

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1. 

   1

   Select the text you want to strike out. To do this, just tap and hold one of the words you want to cross out, and then drag either side of the selection bars until all of the desired text is highlighted.

2. 

   2

   Tap the strikethrough icon (Android and Windows tablets only). If you see an icon that has lowercase «

   ab

   » with a horizontal line crossing through it, you can tap that icon to immediately strike through the selected text. If not, skip to the next step.

3. 

   3

   Tap the text formatting icon. It’s the icon of a capital «A» that has three horizontal dots beneath it.^[2]
   You’ll see this option at the top of the screen if you didn’t see a crossed-out «

   ab

   » icon.

4. 

   4

   Tap Strikethrough. This crosses out the selected text.

   • If you want to remove the strikethrough effect, select the text again, and then tap the ab icon (if you see it) or tap the text formatting icon and select Clear Formatting.

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Did this summary help you?

In this post you’ll learn how to strikethrough text (or cross out text) in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Each software works a little bit differently: PowerPoint and Word both have the strikethrough command available in the Ribbon. In addition, for the Microsoft Office programs, if you navigate through the Font dialog box (or Format Cells dialog box in Excel) you get a bunch of other useful text effect options.

If you want to strikethrough text outside of the Microsoft Office suite (like inside a YouTube comment), you can check out the post by Online Sense here.

How to strikethrough text in Word

There are two ways you can strikethrough text in Microsoft Word.

Neither one is better nor worse, it just depends on the number of features you want to get access to. The Font dialog box method below gives you the most text formatting effects.

1. Use the strikethrough command in the Ribbon

To use the Ribbon in Word to create the strikethrough effect, simply:

1. Select the text you want to cross out
2. Navigate to the Home tab
3. Click the Strikethrough command

Note: If you are using the strikethrough effect to show edits and make comments, a better method is to use Microsoft Word’s built-in Comments command. To learn how to add comments in Word, read our guide here.

2. Use the Font dialog box strikethrough command

The fastest way to open the Font dialog box in Microsoft Word is with the Ctrl+D keyboard shortcut. If you don’t want to memorize a new shortcut, you can alternatively open it from the Home tab.

1. Select the text you want to cross out
2. Go to the Home tab
3. Click the downward facing arrow in the Font group
4. Select Strikethrough (pictured below)
5. Click OK

As pictured below, you have a variety of additional text formatting options inside the Font dialog box. To see an example of these different text features, read below.

3. Text effect options in Word

Checking the box creates the crossed out text effect. To remove the text effect, simply open the Font dialog box again and un-check the box.

These options in Word are quite different than what you will find if you migrate to Google docs. To expand your knowledge and learn how to strikethrough on Google docs, read our guide here.

The advantage of using the Font dialog box is that it gives you seven other text effect options (as you can see in the picture above). Here are the keyboard shortcuts for each one:

• Strikethrough: Alt + K
• Double Strikethrough: Alt+L
• Superscript: Alt+P
• Subscript: Alt+B
• Small caps: Alt+M
• All caps: Alt+A
• Hidden: Alt+H

To expand your knowledge and learn how to use the Font dialog box to underline words only and change the underline color of your underline, read our guide here.

Note: To learn all the strikethrough shortcuts for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, see our guide here.

How to do a strikethrough in Excel

There are 4 different ways you can strikeout text in Excel using the Format Cells dialog box.

The reason that there are so many options in Excel is that you can leverage cell borders to create the diagonal cross-out text effect (described below). But first, let’s start with the basics.

1. Strikethrough text in Excel

The fastest way to create the strikeout text effect in Excel is to use the Ctrl+5 keyboard shortcut. Simply select your text (or the cell with your text in it) and hit Ctrl+5.

Hitting the Ctrl+5 shortcut once applies the text effect. Hitting the shortcut a second time removes the text effect.

If you don’t want to memorize the shortcut, you can also access the strikethrough command through the Format Cells dialog box.

1. Select the cells you want to strikeout in your spreadsheet
2. Select the Home tab
3. Click the downward facing arrow in the Font group
4. On the Font tab select Strikethrough (see image below)
5. Click OK

Just like any other program, applying the effect once strikes out your text. Applying the effect a second time removes it.

Also please note that the Format Cells dialog box is where you access the Superscript and Subscript commands. To learn more about this, read our guide here.

2. How to diagonally strikethrough text in Excel

In this example, we are going to create a diagonal strikethrough and use the Format Cells keyboard shortcut.

1. Select the cells you want to strikeout in your spreadsheet
2. Hit Ctrl + 1 to open the Format Cells dialog box (or use the Ribbon command discussed above)
3. Navigate to the Border tab
4. Add the diagonal lines (picture below )
5. Click OK

Applying a diagonal border once applies the effect to your cell. Applying it a second time removes it.

So if you later want to remove this diagonal crossed out effect, simply navigate back to the Format Cells dialog box (Ctrl + 1), navigate to the Border section and re-apply the diagonal cell borders.

3. Other text effect options in Excel

Inside the Format Cells dialog box in Excel, there are 3 other text effects you can apply to your text (as pictured above):

• Strikethrough: Alt + K
• Superscript: Alt + E
• Subscript: Alt + B

To expand your knowledge and learn how to copy and paste formatting in Excel, see the section on the Paste Special shortcut inside our guide here.

How to strikethrough text in PowerPoint

There are two different ways to cross out text in PowerPoint.

You can either use the strikethrough command in the Ribbon or use the Font dialog box. Which method is best depends on how many text effect options you want to apply.

1. Use the strikethrough command in the Ribbon

1. Select the text you want to cross out
2. Navigate to the Home tab
3. Click the Strikethrough command

To later remove the crossed-out text effect, simply reapply the strikethrough command or select your text and hit Ctrl + Spacebar on your keyboard to wipe out the text formatting.

2. Use the strikethrough command in the Font dialog box

The fastest way to open the Font dialog box in PowerPoint is to use one of the following three shortcuts (they all do the same thing):

1. Ctrl+T
2. Ctrl+Shift+P
3. Ctrl+Shift+F

If any of the above shortcuts do not work for you, check out our guide here.

If you don’t want to memorize one of the above keyboard shortcuts (which I highly recommend doing), you can also access the Font dialog box from your Ribbon as follows:

1. Select the text you want to cross out
2. Click the downward-facing arrow in the in Font group
3. Select Strikethrough (pictured below)
4. Click OK

If you want to apply the Double Strikethrough effect, you have to go through the Font dialog box in PowerPoint.

Using the Font dialog box you do not get a live preview of the effect. After selecting the effect(s) you want, click OK to see it applied to your text.

3. Text effect options in PowerPoint

In addition to the strikethrough command, the Font dialog box in PowerPoint gives you 6 other text effects you can apply to your text (as pictured below).

• Strikethrough: Alt + K
• Double Strikethrough: Alt + L
• Superscript: Alt + P
• Subscript: Alt + B
• Small Caps: Alt + M
• All Caps: Alt + A
• Equalize Character Height: Alt + Q

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a variety of ways you can strikethrough text in the Microsoft Office suite.

And while it’s easiest to access the command through the Ribbon in Word and PowerPoint, the Font dialog boxe give you the most text effect options to work with.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our online courses and presentation resources here.

How to Strikethrough Text with Our Converter

To use our strikethrough text converter, follow these simple instructions:

1. Type your text into the “Input” textbox.
2. Make sure the “Strikethrough” button is selected.
3. Copy and paste the text from the “Output” textbox.

You can select another button to convert your text to different Unicode text.

What Is Strikethrough Text?

Strikethrough text, also known as crossed out text, is one type of fun text that along with italic text, bold text, underlined text, and other obscure characters that can be generated from Unicode.  They are unique character codes that a computer is able to understand and look cool to human eyes. They can even be copy and pasted to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter so you can share with your friends. Feel free to play around with strikethrough text generator above to come up with fun text you can send to your friends!

To use the strikethrough text generator tool, just enter your text on the left and see the result under “Output.” The other fun text options you can choose from above include:

• Strikethrough Text: Create text that is s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶d̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶.
• Underline Text: Generate text that is u͟n͟d͟e͟r͟l͟i͟n͟e͟d͟.
• Double Underline Text: Create text that is d͇o͇u͇b͇l͇e͇ u͇n͇d͇e͇r͇l͇i͇n͇e͇d͇.
• Italics Text: Create text that is italicized.
• Bold Text: Create text that is bolded.
• Cursive Text: Generate text that is cursive.

To see what other Unicode text options are available, check out our small text generator and upside down text generator.