I bet you didn't know that you could hide a worksheet in MS Excel did you? Well a lot of folks don't!
If you are wondering why on earth you would want to hide a worksheet, the answer is that sometimes you might have worksheets that you do not use very often but they are still a very important part of your Excel workbook, like book prices that are referenced by other sheets.
To prevent inadvertent changes to these sheets, or to just have less tabs to navigate through, you can hide one or more of your worksheets from view.
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- Click on the worksheet tab you would like to hide. If you want to select multiple sheet tabs, use your CTRL key.
- Click on Format | Sheet.
- Click on Hide.
- To unhide any hidden sheets, you can simply click Format Sheet | Unhide.
- Select the sheets you would like to unhide.
- Click OK.
There is another method that you can use to hide a worksheet that is a bit more advanced, but you may like it:
- Right-click the tab of the sheet you would like to hide.
- Select View Code.
- When the Microsoft Visual Basic (VBE) window opens, click on F4.
You will see the Properties pane on the left with a list of properties.
- Make sure that the Alphabetic tab is selected and note the last property on the list, Visible.
- The Visible property has a default value of xlSheetVisible. Click on that value and a drop-down arrow will appear.
- Select xlSheetVeryHidden and close the Visual Basic window.
You will now see that the sheet is hidden.
The difference using this method is that the name of the hidden sheet does not appear when you click Format | Sheet | Unhide, which makes it a pretty effective say of hiding information from most MS Excel users.
To unhide a sheet that has been hidden using this method, follow the steps below:
- Right-click the tab of any sheet in your workbook.
- Select View Code.
- When the VBE window opens, click CTRL + R to show the Project pane.
You will see all workbooks listed in the Project pane.
- Select the name of the hidden sheet under the workbook name.
- Click F4 to show the Properties pane.
- In the Properties pane, change the Visible property from xlSheetVeryHidden to xlSheetVisible.
- Close the VBE window.
Your sheet is now visible!
I bet you can find your own reasons for hiding a worksheet in your MS Excel workbook and now you have a couple of ways to make it happen!
Carol Bratt is the Office Applications Editor at Daves Computer Tips. She has authored several informative Microsoft Office books and writes the monthly Word Bytes Newsletter with more tips and tricks in each issue. Visit Carol's website for more great Microsoft Office tips and tricks! Click here to see her latest books! You can read more about Carol here.