Cell hidden in excel

Hide or display cell values

Suppose you have a worksheet that contains confidential information, such as employee salaries, that you do not want a co-worker who stops by your desk to see. Or perhaps you multiply the values in a range of cells by the value in another cell that you do not want to be visible on the worksheet. By applying a custom number format, you can hide the values of those cells on the worksheet.

Note: Although cells with hidden values appear blank on the worksheet, their values remain displayed in the formula bar where you can work with them.

Hide cell values

Select the cell or range of cells that contains values that you want to hide. For more information, see Select cells, ranges, rows, or columns on a worksheet .

Note: The selected cells will appear blank on the worksheet, but a value appears in the formula bar when you click one of the cells.

On the Home tab, click the Dialog Box Launcher next to Number.

In the Category box, click Custom.

In the Type box, select the existing codes.

Type ;;; (three semicolons).

Tip: To cancel a selection of cells, click any cell on the worksheet.

Select the cell or range of cells that contains values that are hidden. For more information, see Select cells, ranges, rows, or columns on a worksheet .

On the Home tab, click the Dialog Box Launcher next to Number.

In the Category box, click General to apply the default number format, or click the date, time, or number format that you want.

Tip: To cancel a selection of cells, click any cell on the worksheet.

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How to Hide Cells, Rows, and Columns in Excel

Lori Kaufman is a technology expert with 25 years of experience. She’s been a senior technical writer, worked as a programmer, and has even run her own multi-location business. Read more.

There may be times when you want to hide information in certain cells or hide entire rows or columns in an Excel worksheet. Maybe you have some extra data you reference in other cells that does not need to be visible.

We will show you how to hide cells and rows and columns in your worksheets and then show them again.

Update, 11/3/21: Looking to hide or unhide columns in Microsoft Excel? We have an updated guide for you.

Hide Cells

You can’t hide a cell in the sense that it completely disappears until you unhide it. With what would that cell be replaced? Excel can only blank out a cell so that nothing displays in the cell. Select individual cells or multiple cells using the “Shift” and “Ctrl” keys, just like you would when selecting multiple files in Windows Explorer. Right-click on any of the selected cells and select “Format Cells” from the popup menu.

The “Format Cells” dialog box displays. Make sure the “Number” tab is active and select “Custom” in the “Category” list. In the “Type” edit box, enter three semicolons (;) without the parentheses and click “OK”.

NOTE: You might want to note what the “Type” was for each of the selected cells is before you change it so you can change the type of the cells back to what it was to show the content again.

The data in the selected cells is now hidden, but the value or the formula is still in the cell and displays in the “Formula Bar”.

To unhide the content in the cells, follow the same steps listed above, but choose the original number category and type for the cells rather than “Custom” and the three semicolons.

NOTE: If you type anything into cells in which you hid the content, it will automatically be hidden after you press “Enter”. Also, the original value in the hidden cell will be replaced with the new value or formula that you type into the cell.

Hide Rows and Columns

If you have a large worksheet, you might want to hide some rows and columns for data you don’t currently need to view. To hide an entire row, right-click on the row number and select “Hide”.

NOTE: To hide multiple rows, select the rows first by clicking and dragging over the range of rows you want to hide, and then right-click on the selected rows and select “Hide”. You can select non-sequential rows by pressing “Ctrl” as you click on the row numbers for the rows you want to select.

The hidden row numbers are skipped in the row number column and a double line displays in place of the hidden rows.

Hiding columns is a very similar process to hiding rows. Right-click on the column you want to hide, or select multiple column letters first and then right-click on the selected columns. Select “Hide” from the popup menu.

The hidden column letters are skipped in the row number column and a double line displays in place of the hidden rows.

To unhide a row or multiple rows, select the row before the hidden row(s) and the row after the hidden row(s) and right-click on the selection and select “Unhide” from the popup menu.

To unhide a column or multiple columns, select the two columns surrounding the hidden column(s), right-click on the selection, and select “Unhide” from the popup menu.

If you have a large spreadsheet and you don’t want to hide any cells, rows, or columns, you can freeze rows and columns so any headings you set up don’t scroll when you scroll through your data.

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How to hide and unhide rows in Excel

by Svetlana Cheusheva, updated on March 17, 2023

The tutorial shows three different ways to hide rows in your worksheets. It also explains how to show hidden rows in Excel and how to copy only visible rows.

If you want to prevent users from wandering into parts of a worksheet you don’t want them to see, then hide such rows from their view. This technique is often used to conceal sensitive data or formulas, but you may also wish to hide unused or unimportant areas to keep your users focused on relevant information.

On the other hand, when updating your own sheets or exploring inherited workbooks, you would certainly want to unhide all rows and columns to view all data and understand the dependencies. This article will teach you both options.

How to hide rows in Excel

As is the case with nearly all common tasks in Excel, there is more than one way to hide rows: by using the ribbon button, right-click menu, and keyboard shortcut.

Anyway, you begin with selecting the rows you’d like to hide:

• To select one row, click on its heading.
• To select multiple contiguous rows, drag across the row headings using the mouse. Or select the first row and hold down the Shift key while selecting the last row.
• To select non-contiguous rows, click the heading of the first row and hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the headings of other rows that you want to select.

With the rows selected, proceed with one of the following options.

Hide rows using the ribbon

If you enjoy working with the ribbon, you can hide rows in this way:

1. Go to the Home tab >Cells group, and click the Format button.
2. Under Visibility, point to Hide & Unhide, and then select Hide Rows.

Alternatively, you can click Home tab >Format > Row Height… and type 0 in the Row Height box.

Either way, the selected rows will be hidden from view straight away.

In case you don’t want to bother remembering the location of the Hide command on the ribbon, you can access it from the context menu: right click the selected rows, and then click Hide.

Excel shortcut to hide row

If you’d rather not take your hands off the keyboard, you can quickly hide the selected row(s) by pressing this shortcut: Ctrl + 9

How to unhide rows in Excel

As with hiding rows, Microsoft Excel provides a few different ways to unhide them. Which one to use is a matter of your personal preference. What makes the difference is the area you select to instruct Excel to unhide all hidden rows, only specific rows, or the first row in a sheet.

Unhide rows by using the ribbon

On the Home tab, in the Cells group, click the Format button, point to Hide & Unhide under Visibility, and then click Unhide Rows.

You select a group of rows including the row above and below the row(s) you want to unhide, right-click the selection, and choose Unhide in the pop-up menu. This method works beautifully for unhiding a single hidden row as well as multiple rows.

For example, to show all hidden rows between rows 1 and 8, select this group of rows like shown in the screenshot below, right-click, and click Unhide:

Unhide rows with a keyboard shortcut

Here is the Excel Unhide Rows shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + 9

Pressing this key combination (3 keys simultaneously) displays any hidden rows that intersect the selection.

Show hidden rows by double-clicking

In many situations, the fastest way to unhide rows in Excel is to double click them. The beauty of this method is that you don’t need to select anything. Simply hover your mouse over the hidden row headings, and when the mouse pointer turns into a split two-headed arrow, double click. That’s it!

How to unhide all rows in Excel

In order to unhide all rows on a sheet, you need to select all rows. For this, you can either:

• Click the Select All button (a little triangle at the upper left corner of a sheet, in the intersection of the row and column headings):
• Press the Select All shortcut: Ctrl + A

Please note that in Microsoft Excel, this shortcut behaves differently in different situations. If the cursor is in an empty cell, the whole worksheet is selected. But if the cursor is in one of contiguous cells with data, only that group of cells is selected; to select all cells, press Ctrl+A one more time.

Once the entire sheet is selected, you can unhide all rows by doing one of the following:

• Press Ctrl + Shift + 9 (the fastest way).
• Select Unhide from the right-click menu (the easiest way that does not require remembering anything).
• On the Home tab, click Format >Unhide Rows (the traditional way).

How to unhide all cells in Excel

To unhide all rows and columns, select the whole sheet as explained above, and then press Ctrl + Shift + 9 to show hidden rows and Ctrl + Shift + 0 to show hidden columns.

How to unhide specific rows in Excel

Depending on which rows you want to unhide, select them as described below, and then apply one of the unhide options discussed above.

• To show one or several adjacent rows, select the row above and below the row(s) that you want to unhide.
• To unhide multiple non-adjacent rows, select all the rows between the first and last visible rows in the group.

For example, to unhide rows 3, 7, and 9, you select rows 2 — 10, and then use the ribbon, context menu or keyboard shortcut to unhide them.

How to unhide top rows in Excel

Hiding the first row in Excel is easy, you treat it just like any other row on a sheet. But when one or more top rows are hidden, how do you make them visible again, given that there is nothing above to select?

The clue is to select cell A1. For this, just type A1 in the Name Box, and press Enter.

Alternatively, go to the Home tab > Editing group, click Find & Select, and then click Go To… . The Go To dialog window pops up, you type A1 in the Reference box, and click OK.

With cell A1 selected, you can unhide the first hidden row in the usual way, by clicking Format > Unhide Rows on the ribbon, or choosing Unhide from the context menu, or pressing the unhide rows shortcut Ctrl + Shift + 9

Aside from this common approach, there is one more (and faster!) way to unhide first row in Excel. Simply hover over the hidden row heading, and when the mouse pointer turns into a split two-headed arrow, double click:

Tips and tricks for hiding and unhiding rows in Excel

As you have just seen, hiding and showing rows in Excel is quick and straightforward. In some situations, however, even a simple task can become a challenge. Below you will find easy solutions to a few tricky problems.

How to hide rows containing blank cells

To hide rows that contain any blank cells, proceed with these steps:

1. Select the range that contains empty cells you want to hide.
2. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find & Select >Go To Special.
3. In the Go To Special dialog box, select the Blanks radio button, and click OK. This will select all empty cells in the range.
4. Press Ctrl + 9 to hide the corresponding rows.

This method works well when you want to hide all rows that contain at least one blank cell, as shown in the screenshot below:

If you want to hide blank rows in Excel, i.e. the rows where all cells are blank, then use the COUNTBLANK formula explained in How to remove blank rows to identify such rows.

How to hide rows based on cell value

To hide and show rows based on a cell value in one or more columns, use the capabilities of Excel Filter. It provides a handful of predefined filters for text, numbers and dates as well as an ability to configure a custom filter with your own criteria (please follow the above link for full details).

To unhide filtered rows, you remove filter from a specific column or clear all filters in a sheet, as explained here.

Hide unused rows so that only working area is visible

In situations when you have a small working area on the sheet and a whole lot of unnecessary blank rows and columns, you can hide unused rows in this way:

1. Select the row beneath the last row with data (to select the entire row, click on the row header).
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + Down arrow to extend the selection to the bottom of the sheet.
3. Press Ctrl + 9 to hide the selected rows.

In a similar fashion, you hide unused columns:

1. Select an empty column that comes after the last column of data.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + Right arrow to select all other unused columns to the end of the sheet.
3. Press Ctrl + 0 to hide the selected columns. Done!

If you decide to unhide all cells later, select the entire sheet, then press Ctrl + Shift + 9 to unhide all rows and Ctrl + Shift + 0 to unhide all columns.

How to locate all hidden rows on a sheet

If your worksheet contains hundreds or thousands of rows, it can be hard to detect hidden ones. The following trick makes the job easy.

1. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find & Select >Go To Special. Or press Ctrl+G to open the Go To dialog box, and then click Special.
2. In the Go To Special window, select Visible cells only and click OK.

This will select all visible cells and mark the rows adjacent to hidden rows with a white border:

How to copy visible rows in Excel

Supposing you have hidden a few irrelevant rows, and now you want to copy the relevant data to another sheet or workbook. How would you go about it? Select the visible rows with the mouse and press Ctrl + C to copy them? But that would also copy the hidden rows!

To copy only visible rows in Excel, you’ll have to go about it differently:

1. Select visible rows using the mouse.
2. Go to the Home tab >Editing group, and click Find & Select >Go To Special.
3. In the Go To Special window, select Visible cells only and click OK. That will really select only visible rows like shown in the previous tip.
4. Press Ctrl + C to copy the selected rows.
5. Press Ctrl + V to paste the visible rows.

Cannot unhide rows in Excel

If you have troubles unhiding rows in your worksheets, it’s most likely because of one of the following reasons.

1. The worksheet is protected

Whenever the Hide and Unhide features are disabled (greyed out) in your Excel, the first thing to check is worksheet protection.

For this, go to the Review tab > Changes group, and see if the Unprotect Sheet button is there (this button appears only in protected worksheets; in an unprotected worksheet, there will be the Protect Sheet button instead). So, if you see the Unprotect Sheet button, click on it.

If you want to keep the worksheet protection but allow hiding and unhiding rows, click the Protect Sheet button on the Review tab, select the Format rows box, and click OK.

Tip. If the sheet is password-protected, but you cannot remember the password, follow these guidelines to unprotect worksheet without password.

2. Row height is small, but not zero

In case the worksheet is not protected but specific rows still cannot be unhidden, check the height of those rows. The point is that if a row height is set to some small value, between 0.08 and 1, the row seems to be hidden but actually it is not. Such rows cannot be unhidden in the usual way. You have to change the row height to bring them back.

To have it done, perform these steps:

1. Select a group of rows, including a row above and a row below the problematic row(s).
2. Right click the selection and choose Row Height… from the context menu.
3. Type the desired number of the Row Height box (for example the default 15 points) and click OK.

This will make all hidden rows visible again.

If the row height is set to 0.07 or less, such rows can be unhidden normally, without the above manipulations.

3. Trouble unhiding the first row in Excel

If someone has hidden the first row in a sheet, you may have problems getting it back because you cannot select the row before it. In this case, select cell A1 as explained in How to unhide top rows in Excel and then unhide the row as usual, for example by pressing Ctrl + Shift + 9 .

4. Some rows are filtered out

When the row numbers in your worksheet turn blue, this indicates that some rows are filtered out. To unhide such rows, simply remove all filters on a sheet.

This is how you hide and undie rows in Excel. I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog next week!

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