How to (intermittently) skip certain cells when running IPython notebook?

Currently, there is no such feature included in the IPython notebook. Nevertheless, there are some possibilities to make your life easier, like:

• use the %store or maybe better the %%cache magic (extension) to store the results of these intermittently cells, so they don't have to be recomputed (see https://github.com/rossant/ipycache)

• add a if==0: before the cells you don't want to execute

• convert these cells to raw cells (but you will loose the already stored output!)

(see discussion at https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/2125)

Here's a simple and universal solution without the need for workarounds: Simply type this as the top line of the cell to skip the cell:

%%script echo skipping

It's tested on Windows and Mac with recent Jupyter, and I think it should work on other Unix-like platforms as well because they also have an echo command. Some of the other proposed solutions are more platform-specific.

Of course you can put what ever text you like instead of "skipping". When you execute the cell, it will merely print this text instead of executing the code in the cell.

Though this isn't exactly what you seem to be looking for, if you wish to entirely omit the execution of a cell (where no cached results are loaded), you can add the following hack at the beginning of a cell (assuming you are using a Unix-based OS):

%%script false

or a variant (working as of early 2020 -- see here for explanation):

%%script false --no-raise-error