by Svetlana Cheusheva, updated on
Learn how to quickly hide selected worksheets in Excel via the right-click menu and how to hide all sheets except active one with VBA.
Normally, when you open Excel, you can see all sheet tabs at the bottom of your workbook. But what if you don't want all of your worksheets to be there? Say, some sheets contain source data referenced by your formulas and you'd rather not show that data to other users. Fortunately, you can easily hide as many sheets as you like as long as at least one spreadsheet remains visible.
The fastest way to hide sheets in Excel is this:
Done! The selected sheets are no longer in view.
Here's how you can quickly select multiple or all worksheets in Excel:
Tips:
Another way to hide worksheets in Excel is by clicking the Hide Sheet command on the ribbon. Here's how:
Although Microsoft Excel provides no keyboard shortcut for hiding sheets, one of the following workarounds can work a treat.
Select the sheets to be hidden and press the following keys one by one, not all at once: Alt, H, O, U, S
The best thing is that you don't actually have to memorize these keys. Once you press Alt, Excel will show you which key activates which menu:
If you want to be able to hide sheets with a single keystroke, use the following simple macro to hide selected sheets, and then assign a key combination of your choosing to execute the macro.
You insert the macro in your Excel in the usual way (the detailed instructions can be found here). After that, carry out the following steps to assign the desired keyboard shortcut to the macro:
For example, you may choose to hide sheets with this shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + H
In some situations, you may need to hide all worksheets except one. If your Excel file contains a reasonable number of sheets, it's no big deal to hide them manually using one of the methods described above. If you are bored with routines, you can automate the process with this macro:
To add the macro to your Excel, perform these steps:
That's it! All the worksheets except for the active (current) sheet are hidden at once.
Aside from hiding specific worksheets, Excel also enables you to hide the entire workbook window. For this, you go to the View tab > Window group, and click the Hide button.
As soon as you do that, the workbook window and all sheet tabs will disappear. To get your workbook back, go to the View tab again, and click Unhide.
As you see, it's very easy to hide worksheets in Excel. And it's almost as easy to unhide sheets. If you want to make it more difficult for other people to view or edit some important data or formulas, then make your worksheet very hidden. Our next tutorial will teach you how. Please stay tuned!
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