Sheets in excel are hidden

The default setting in Excel is to show all the tabs (also called sheets) below the working area.

But if you can’t see any tabs and are wondering where has it disappeared, worry not. There are some possible reasons that may have been the cause of missing tabs in your Excel workbook.

In this article, I will show you a couple of methods you can use to restore the missing tabs in your Excel Workbook.

If you can’t see any of the tab names, it is most likely because of a setting that needs to be changed.

And in case you can see some of the sheet tabs but not all the sheet tabs, one possible reason could be that the sheets have been hidden, and you need to unhide the sheets to make the sheet tabs visible.

Another less likely but possible reason could be that the scrollbar he’s hiding the sheet tabs (when there are more sheets that extends beyond where the scrollbar starts)

Let’s have a look at each of these scenarios.

When All the Sheet Tabs are Missing

Whenever you open an Excel workbook, it must have at least one sheet tab in it (even if it’s a new blank workbook).

If you can’t see any tab, this most likely means that you need to change a setting that will enable the visibility of the tabs.

Below are the steps to restore the visibility of the tabs in Excel:

1. Click the File tab

1. Click on Options

1. In the ‘Options’ dialog box that opens, click on the Advanced option

1. Scroll down to the ‘Display Options for this Workbook’ section
2. Check the ‘Show sheet tabs’ option

The above change would ensure that all the available sheet tabs in the workbook become visible (unless the user has specifically hidden some of the worksheets)

Note that this setting is workbook specific – which means that in case you enable this setting in one of the workbooks, it would only make the tabs reappear in that specific workbook

When Some of the Sheet Tabs are Missing

Sometimes, you may be able to see some of the tabs in the workbook, while some others may be missing.

In this section, I have some solutions when only some of the tabs are missing and some are visible.

Some of the Sheets are Hidden

The most likely reason that you cannot see some of the tabs in the workbook is that they have been hidden by the user.

When a worksheet is hidden in Excel, it continues to exist as a part of the Excel workbook, but you don’t see that sheet tab name along with other sheet tabs.

And this has a really simple solution – you need to unhide the sheets.

Below are the steps to unhide one or more sheets in Excel:

1. Right-click on any of the existing sheet tab name
2. Click on the Unhide option. In case there are no hidden sheets in the workbook, this option will be grayed out

1. In the Unhide dialog box, click on the sheet name you want to unhide

1. Click on OK

The above steps would unhide the selected sheet, and it would reappear as a tab in your workbook.

In case you want to unhide multiple sheets, you can select them in one go in the ‘Unhide’ dialog box. To do this, hold the Control key (or Command key if using Mac) and then click on the Sheet names that you want to unhide. This would select all the sheets on which you click and then you can unhide all these with one click.

But what if you do not see the tab name in the names listed in the Unhide dialog box?

Well, there is a way in Excel to hide a sheet in such a way that its name doesn’t show up in the Unhide dialog box.

Then how do you unhide these ‘very hidden’ sheets?

You can read my tutorial here where I show you how to unhide those sheets that have been ‘very hidden’. It’s easy and it will only take a couple of clicks.

Tabs are Hidden Because of the Scroll Bar

Another reason your tabs may be missing could be because of a large scroll bar that hides the tabs.

And it has a simple fix – resize the scroll bar to make all other tabs visible.

Below I have a screenshot of an Excel workbook where I have 8 sheets but only three sheet tabs are visible. This is because of a large scrollbar that hides those tab names.

To get the sheet tabs to reappear, click on the three dots icon on the left of the scrollbar and drag it to the right. This will minimize the scroll bar and all the sheet tabs that were earlier hidden would now become visible.

In case you have a large workbook with a lot of sheets, even if you minimize the scrollbar, some sheet tabs would still be hidden.

In such a case, you can use the navigation icons (which are at the left of the first sheet tab) to make those sheet tabs visible.

So these are some of the ways you can use to fix the issue when the sheet tabs are missing and not showing in Excel. If you don’t see any sheet tab in the workbook, it’s most likely because of the setting in the Excel Options dialog box that needs to be changed.

And in case you see some sheet tab names but some are missing, then you need to check if some of the sheets have been hidden by the user or if they are hidden because of a large scroll bar.

Other Excel tutorials you may also like:

• Microsoft Excel Won’t Open – How to Fix it! (6 Possible Solutions)
• How to Switch Between Sheets in Excel? (7 Better Ways)
• Count Sheets in Excel (using VBA)
• How to Get the Sheet Name in Excel? Easy Formula
• How to Insert New Worksheet in Excel (Easy Shortcuts)
• How to Delete Sheets in Excel (Shortcuts + VBA)
• Arrow Keys not Working in Excel | Moving Pages Instead of Cells
• How to Change the Color of the Sheet Tab in Excel

One of the first “tricks” an Excel user learns is to hide and unhide a sheet.

This is an exceptionally useful feature as it allows us to store data in a sheet, such as lists and tables, but keep the user of the workbook from seeing, manipulating, and more importantly, corrupting the information on the hidden sheet.

As with most things in Excel, there is more than one way to hide a sheet or multiple sheets.  One of the easiest methods is to select a sheet (or select multiple sheets using standard Windows CTRL and Shift selection techniques), right-click the sheet tab then select “Hide”.

As an example; suppose you have twelve sheets labeled “January” through “December” and you want to hide all the monthly sheets except “December”.

1. Select the “Jan” sheet
2. Hold down the Shift key
3. Select the “Nov” sheet
4. Right-click on any selected sheet tab
5. Click “Hide”

Unfortunately, unhiding multiple sheets in a single step is not as easy.  If you right-click a sheet tab and select “Unhide”, the proceeding dialog box only allows a single sheet to be selected for the unhide operation.

This means you will have to perform the unhide operation eleven times to restore all the hidden sheets to a visible state.

Never fear, a solution is here (actually, three solutions)

Solution 1 – Create a Custom View

An often-overlooked feature in Excel is the ability to save a custom view.

Custom views can be used to “save” the hidden or visible states of rows and columns.  This is convenient when you wish to show details of data for one printout, but a summarized version of the data in a different printout.

1. Hide the desired rows and/or columns.
2. Click View (tab) -> Workbook Views (group) -> Custom Views -> Add… and give the current configuration a name.

If you change the hidden/visible state of rows and/or columns but then wish to return to the saved configuration, repeat the process (View (tab) -> Workbook Views (group) -> Custom Views), select your saved view then click “Show”.

The screen will immediately return to the desired state.

Custom views also work with the visible/hidden states of worksheets.  If we create a custom view prior to hiding ANY of the sheets (View (tab) -> Workbook Views (group) -> Custom Views -> Add…), we can hide as many sheets as we like.  When it comes time to redisplay all the sheets, we repeat the process and select our “normal” view and click “Show”.

All the sheets have returned.

There is one negative to this process.  Custom views do not work with Data Tables.  The moment you add a Data Table to ANY sheet, the Custom Views feature becomes inoperable.

Because more and more people use Data Tables in their workbooks (and why wouldn’t you?  They’re AMAZING!!!), we need to explore another way of unhiding all hidden worksheets.

Solution 2 – Using the VBA Immediate Window

Right up front, this does not require the use of macro-enabled workbooks.  This technique can be performed in any Excel workbook.

1. Open the Visual Basic Editor by pressing Alt-F11 on the keyboard or right click on any sheet tab and select View Code.

Don’t concern yourself with what you see in the ensuing window; all of that is for another day.

1. Activate the Immediate Window by clicking View -> Immediate Window (or CTRL-G).

Now we will run a macro.  This macro will loop through all the hidden sheets and revert their visibility states to “visible”.  We will use a “For…Each” collection loop to perform this operation.

NOTE:  If you are interested in learning about this command and many other useful things macros can do for you, visit the links at the end of this tutorial.

1. In the Immediate window, type

for each sh in worksheets: sh.visible=true: next sh

(press Enter)

All the sheets have returned to a visible state.

What does that code mean?  Let’s break down the code.

for each sh in worksheets

This establishes a collection (list) of all worksheets and allows us to refer to each sheet individually with the alias “sh”.

sh.visible=true

With the first sheet in the collection, set the visible property to “true”.  This makes the sheet visible to the user.

next sh

This selects the next sheet in the collection and returns to the first statement to repeat the process.

This process will repeat for as many sheets as are in the collection.

If this code is something you will use frequently, you can save the code in a Notepad file and then copy/paste it back into the Immediate Window whenever needed.

Solution 3 – Add a Macro to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)

This technique is covered in detail in the Excel VBA course (link below if you are interested in becoming a VBA Powerhouse) but will be summarized here.

If this feature is to be used often across many different workbooks, it’s worth taking the time to set this feature up on the QAT.

We will create a simple macro and store it in a special place in Excel called the Personal Macro Workbook.

Creating the Macro

1. Click the “Record Macro” button on the Status Bar in the lower-left corner of Excel.
2. Give the macro a name (“Unhide_All” is a good name.) Macro names cannot contain spaces.
3. Change the “Store macro in:” option from “This Workbook” to “Personal Macro Workbook”.
4. Click OK
5. Click the “Stop Recording” button on the Status Bar in the lower-left corner of Excel.
6. Open the Visual Basic Editor (Alt-F11).
7. In the Project Explorer panel (upper-left), click the plus-sign next to the entry labeled “VBAProject (PERSONAL.XLSB)”.
8. Click the plus-sign next to the folder labeled “Modules”.
9. Double-click the module named “Module1”.
10. Highlight and delete EVERYHTING in the code window (right panel).
11. Enter the following code:

Sub Unhide_All()
Dim sh As Worksheet
	for each sh in worksheets: sh.visible=true: next sh
End Sub

Setting up the QAT Macro Launch Button

1. Click the down arrow at the far right of the QAT and select “More Commands…” towards the bottom of the list.
2. In the dropdown titled “Choose commands from:” select “Macros”.
3. Select the “Unhide_All” macro on the left and click “Add>>” to move the macro to the list on the right.
4. Click the “Modify” button to personalize the button icon as well as provide a tooltip. Whatever you write in the “Display name:” filed will appear on the screen when the user hover’s over the launch button on the QAT.
5. Click OK.

Whenever you want to invoke the macro to unhide all the hidden sheets, click the unhide macro button on the QAT.

This feature is available for use in all open workbooks.  Because we have updated the Personal Macro Workbook, don’t forget to save the changes to the Personal Macro Workbook when closing Excel.

Additional Resources

Excel VBA For…Each Loop tutorial

Excel VBA – Full Playlist

If you don’t have Office 365 and you’d like a free tool that unhides all sheets for you, then this is it!

You can add this tool to your Quick Access Toolbar or to your Excel ribbon by saving it in your Personal Macro Workbook. In this video I show you the steps to do that.

Many Thanks to Daniel Lamarche from Combo Projects for sharing this tool for free with our community members.

Please visit Daniel’s page at:

The Unhide Worksheets utility

Unhiding hidden worksheets in Excel was for a long time troublesome, especially if there were many hidden worksheets in your workbook. Fortunately, Microsoft has just released a new feature in Office 365 (now: “Microsoft 365) for unhiding multiple sheets at once. So far, so good. But what, if you want to unhide “very hidden” sheets? Or, what if you work with older Office versions? Here is everything you need to know!

In this first part you learn to unhide “normal” hidden worksheets in Excel. This regards the far majority of hidden worksheets. If you “miss” a worksheet from the list of hidden sheets, it’s possible that it is very hidden. For very hidden sheets, please click here to scroll down.

Unhide worksheets manually

The first step: Check if there are any hidden worksheets. Therefore, right click on any sheet name. If the “Unhide” option is greyed out, there are no hidden worksheets in your workbook.

If the “Unhide” button in clickable, click on it. Now you’ll see a list with all hidden (not very hidden) worksheets. Click on any worksheet name in that list and click on OK. 

You want to hide a worksheet? It works basically the same way, just click “Hide” instead of “Unhide”. Please refer to this article for more information.

Update 2021: Unhiding multiple sheets at once with built-in methods (Office 365)

It’s finally here: Unhide multiple worksheets at once in Excel. Microsoft has listened to user suggestions and implemented a fast method to unhide several worksheets:

1. Right-click on any sheet name.
2. Click on “Unhide…” (again: if this button is greyed-out it means that there are no hidden sheets in your file).
3. Hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click on the sheet names one by one you want to show.
   Alternatively, hold down the Shift key to select many sheets at once.

Please note: This feature is only available in Office 365 since beginning of 2021. If you work with older versions of Office / Excel, you have to use one of the following methods.

Unhiding multiple worksheets at once with older versions of Excel

Again, this is primarily revelant for older versions of Excel (not Office 365 since beginning of 2021; if you are on the current Excel version please scroll up). There is another way of unhiding all hidden and very hidden worksheets: Using VBA. As usual, do the following steps:

1. Go to the developer ribbon in Excel (or just press Alt + F11 on the keyboard and skip the next step number two).
2. Click on “Visual Basic”.
3. Add a new module. Therefore, right click on any sheet and then click on “Insert” and “Module”.
4. Paste the following code.
5. Press start on the top.

You can follow the steps on the screenshot on the right-hand-side. If you need assistance with adding the VBA module, please refer to this article.

Sub PROFEXUnhideAllWorksheets()
    'Unhide all sheets in workbook.
    
    Dim PROFEXWorksheet As Worksheet
    'A variable for going through all the worksheets
    
    For Each PROFEXWorksheet In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
    'Do for each worksheet, no matter if hidden or unhidden
    
        PROFEXWorksheet.Visible = xlSheetVisible
        'Make the current worksheet visible
        
    Next PROFEXWorksheet
    'End of the loop...

End Sub

How to unhide hidden worksheets with a keyboard shortcut?

To speed up unhiding sheets with older versions than the current Office 365 version, you can use keyboard shortcuts. Press the following keys after each other:

Alt –> O –> H –> U –> Enter 

Repeat these steps – this should speed up the process of unhiding. There is one more disadvantage: This method doesn’t work for all “very hidden” worksheets in Excel.

Very hidden worksheets you have to unhide within the VBA editor (see below in part 2). Select the very hidden worksheet and set the visibility to show. Therefore click on “Visible” in the properties window (usually on the left bottom corner) and set it to “xlSheetVisible”.

Yes, it sounds strange. Maybe programmer humor… But there is the option to set sheets to “very hidden” in Excel. For unhiding “very hidden” worksheets, you have to open the VBA editor.

1. Click on “Visual Basic” on the left hand side of the Developer ribbon.
2. You can see a list of all worksheets within the Project Explorer.
3. Change the status “Visible” to “xlSheetVisible”.

Part 3: Unhide unhiding hidden and very hidden worksheets comfortably

As unhiding worksheets can be very troublesome, we have included a very simple function into Professor Excel Tools: A worksheet manager.

Just click on “Unhide Sheets” on the “Professor Excel” ribbon. If you don’t have it yet: Download the add-in here.

1. Check the summary: How many hidden and very hidden worksheets does your file have?
2. Conveniently see all worksheets in a list and select them easily. See also the visibility level of “Visible”, “Hidden” or “Very hidden”.
3. Either select all sheets from the list or click one of the easy select button (for example, select all hidden but not very hidden worksheets).
4. Action: Decide, what to do with these sheets: Unhide them, hide them or set them to very hidden.

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This function is included in our Excel Add-In ‘Professor Excel Tools’

(No sign-up, download starts directly)

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Did you know that Excel has two levels of hidden worksheets?  Excel has “hidden” worksheets, and, “very hidden” worksheets. This post walks through the differences, and how to hide worksheets at each level.

By default, all new worksheets are visible.  A visible worksheet’s tab appears in the bottom of the Excel window, enabling the user to click the tab in order to navigate to the worksheet.  Easy enough, let’s move on.

Visible Property

In the real world, an object is either visible or it is not.  For example, Harry Potter is typically visible.  However, when he throws on that sweet cloak of invisibility, he is not visible.  His visible status changes to false.  In the real world, the visible status of an object is either true or false, it is either visible or it is not.  In Excel however, the visible property of a worksheet object has three possible values: true, false, or….very hidden.

Hidden

When a worksheet has a visible property value of true, it is visible and can be seen and selected by the user.  When a worksheet has a visible property of false, it is hidden, and can no longer be seen from within the standard Excel user interface.  That is, the sheet’s tab is gone.  The sheet itself however, is not gone, and formulas can still retrieve values stored on a hidden sheet.  It just disappears from the user interface.

It is pretty easy to hide a sheet.  Although, if we are trying to be technical, we should say it this way: it is pretty easy to change a worksheet’s visible property from true to false.

All five worksheets in my workbook are visible in the following screenshot.

To hide a sheet, simply right-click the sheet’s tab and select hide.  You can also hide a sheet using the following ribbon command:

• Home > Format > Hide & Unhide > Hide Worksheet

You can also hide a sheet using the following keyboard shortcut:

• Alt+o, h, h

Sheet2 is hidden in my workbook, as shown in the screenshot below:

To unhide a sheet, simply right-click any sheet’s tab and select Unhide.  This reveals the Unhide dialog box as shown below.

Pick the hidden sheet and click ok.  You can also unhide a sheet using the following ribbon command:

• Home > Format > Hide & Unhide > Unhide Worksheet

You can also unhide a sheet using the following keyboard shortcut:

• Alt+o, h, u

Now, here is where it gets fun, creating very hidden sheets.

Very Hidden

The third property value is very hidden.  The difference between a hidden sheet and a very hidden sheet is simply this: very hidden sheets do not appear in the Unhide dialog box.

Now, before we get to the mechanics of how to set a sheet’s property to very hidden, let me set up a bit of background that will be useful.  First, we need to understand that in Excel, there is a world outside of the typical Excel user interface.  What you see when navigating inside the Excel application window is a subset of everything available in Excel.  A primary example is macros.  Macros are not edited within the standard interface, they are edited within a utility application called the Visual Basic Editor (VBE).  The VBE is a powerful and useful utility, and Excel power users spend quite a bit of time in it.  It is inside the VBE where we change the visible property of a worksheet to very hidden.  Here is how the VBE refers to the Visible property values:

• True = xlSheetVisible
• False = xlSheetHidden
• Very Hidden = xlSheetVeryHidden

You still with me?  Great, let’s get into the VBE now.

Visual Basic Editor

There are a couple of different ways to open the VBE.  You could use either of the following keyboard shortcut:

• Alt+F11
• Alt+t, m, v

Or, if you are more of a ribbon person, you could use the following ribbon command:

• Developer > Visual Basic  [Note: Microsoft does not ship Excel with the Developer ribbon tab visible, so, you’ll need to turn it on.  In Excel 2010/2013: customize the ribbon and check the Developer tab.  In Excel 2007: go into options and check the “Show developer tab in ribbon” checkbox]

At this point, you should have the VBE open, and it should look a little something like the screenshot below.

In the top left panel is the Project Explorer, where you can use the tree to navigate to any open workbook, and to any sheet.  Double-click the sheet you want to update.

[Note: if you don’t see the Project Explorer, simply select View > Project Explorer]

Then, you’ll be able to view and change the status of the Visible property in the Properties window.

[Note: if you don’t see the Properties window, simply select View > Properties Window]

On the Visible property, use the combo box to change the value to xlSheetVeryHidden, or, to either of the other options.

In the screenshot below, I selected xlSheetVeryHidden from the Visible property combo box:

Once you return to Excel, you’ll notice that the sheet’s tab is not visible.  You’ll also notice that if the workbook contains very hidden sheets, the user won’t have an option to open the Unhide dialog box.  If the workbook contains both hidden and very hidden sheets, then the user can open the Unhide dialog box, however, the very hidden sheets do not appear.  In my workbook, Sheet2 is very hidden, and Sheet3 is hidden, and the Unhide dialog box is shown in the screenshot below.

Wow, Sheet2 is very hidden!

If you want to view the sheet again, simply change the property from xlSheetVeryHidden to xlSheetVisible from within the VBE and you’ll be all set.

Now, with great power comes great responsibility, so use this super power with great care!

Sub Hide_Sheets()
    Dim ws, aSheets
    aSheets = Array("Лист1", "Списки", "Лист2") 'через запятую перечисляем листы для скрытия(обязательно в кавычках)
    For Each ws In aSheets
        ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(ws).Visible = xlSheetVeryHidden
        'отобразить – xlSheetVisible; сделать лист просто скрытым -  xlSheetHidden
    Next wsSh
End Sub

Sub Hide_All_Sheets()
    Dim wsSh As Object
    For Each wsSh In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
        If wsSh.Name <> "Видимый" Then wsSh.Visible = xlSheetVeryHidden
        'отобразить – xlSheetVisible; сделать лист просто скрытым -  xlSheetHidden
    Next wsSh
End Sub

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