Unhiding a sheet in excel

Watch Video – How to Unhide All Sheets In Excel

In case you prefer reading a tutorial over watching a video, below is a detailed written tutorial on unhiding sheets in Excel.

When you work with data that is spread across multiple worksheets in Excel, you may want to hide a few worksheets. This could be to avoid the clutter or to not show some data to your client/manager by hiding some worksheets and only keeping the useful ones visible.

And in some cases, you may have a workbook that has some hidden sheets and you want to unhide some or all of these worksheets.

In this tutorial, I will show you some methods to unhide worksheets in Excel (manually as well as automatically using VBA). I will also show you how to selectively unhide worksheets based on the name or a condition.

So let’s get started!

Unhiding Sheets Manually

If you only have a few worksheets that are hidden, you can manually unhide some or all of these worksheets.

Suppose you have an Excel workbook that has 10 worksheets that are hidden.

Below are the steps to manually unhide worksheets (one at a time):

1. Right-click on any of the existing worksheet tab
2. Click on the Unhide option. This will open the Unhide dialog box that lists all the hidden worksheets
3. In the Unhide dialog box, click on the worksheet that you to unhide (you can only select one at a time).
4. Click OK.

The above steps would unhide the select worksheet.

Note: Unfortunately, there is no in-built functionality in Excel to quickly unhide all the hidden worksheets (or a way to select more than one worksheet and unhide it). As of now, you need to use the unhide dialog box where you can only select one worksheet to unhide.

While there is no-inbuilt functionality to unhide in bulk, you can easily do this with a simple VBA macro code.

Unhide All Sheets At One Go

With VBA, you can easily unhide worksheets in bulk.

For example, if you have 10 hidden worksheets, you can create a simple VBA code to unhide all the worksheets or you can unhide based on a condition (such as unhide only those where there is a specific prefix or year in the name).

Note: The methods covered in this tutorial doesn’t require you to save an Excel workbook in a macro-enabled format (.XLSM) to use the VBA code.

Using Immediate Window

VB Editor in Excel has an immediate window where you can type a line of code and instantly execute it right away.

Below are the steps to use this above line of code to unhide sheets through immediate window:

1. Right-click on any of the visible sheets in the workbook
2. Click on View code. This will open the VB Editor.
3. Click the View option in the menu and then click on the Immediate window. This will make the Immediate window appear in the VB Editor (if not there already).
4. In the Immediate window, copy and paste the following line of code: For each Sheet in Thisworkbook.Sheets: Sheet.Visible=True: Next Sheet
5. Place the cursor at the end of the line
6. Hit the Enter key

That’s it!

The above steps would instantly unhide all the sheets in the workbook.

Once done, you can close the VB Editor.

The best part about this is that you can do this on any workbook. You don’t need to worry about saving the workbook in a macro-enabled format. Just execute a line of code and instantly unhide all the sheets in the workbook.

Let me also quickly explain the below VBA code that we have used in the immediate window to unhide sheets:

For each Sheet in Thisworkbook.Sheets: Sheet.Visible=True: Next Sheet

The above code uses a For Next VBA loop to go through all the sheets in the workbook and set the visible property to TRUE. Once the visible property of all the sheets is changed, the code will end.

The colon (:) used in the code above is equivalent to a line break. While it looks like a single line of code, it has three parts to it which are separated by two colons.

If you’re interested in learning more about the immediate window and some awesome things you can do with it, here is a detailed tutorial about it.

By Adding Macro to QAT (with One Click)

In case you have to unhide worksheets quite often, another good way could be to have the macro code to unhide sheets in the Personal macro workbook and save the icon in the Quick Access Toolbar.

This is just a one time process and once you have it done, you can then unhide sheets in any workbook by simply clicking on a button in the QAT.

This is by far the most efficient way to unhide sheets in Excel (most useful when you get a lot of workbooks with hidden sheets and you have to unhide these).

The trick here is to save the code to unhide sheets in the Personal Macro Workbook.

A Personal Macro Workbook is something that is always open when you open any Excel file (you can’t see it though). When you save a macro code to the Personal Macro workbook, this code is now always available to you. And when you add this to the QAT and you run the macro code with a single click.

Below is the code that you need to add to the Personal Macro Workbook:

Sub UnhideAllSheets()
For Each Sheet In Sheets
    Sheet.Visible = True
Next Sheet
End Sub

Below are the steps to add this code to the Personal Macro Workbook:

1. Click on the record macro button (it’s at the bottom left of the Excel workbook application)
2. In the Record Macro dialog box, change the Store macro in setting to – Personal Macro Workbook.
3. Click OK. This will start recording the macro
4. Click on the Stop macro recording icon (at the bottom left of the workbook). This will stop the macro recording
5.  Right-click on any sheet tab and then click on ‘View Code’
6. In the VB Editor, double-click on the Module object in the Personal.XLSB workbook
7. Remove any existing code and copy and paste the above code.
8. Click the Save icon in the toolbar
9. Close the Vb Editor

The above steps allow you to make the Personal Macro Workbook visible in the VB Editor and place the code to unhide sheets in it.

Now all you need to do is add this code to the Quick Access Toolbar so that you can use it anytime from any workbook.

Below are the steps to add this code to the Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Click on the Customize Quick Access Toolbar icon.
2. Click on More Commands.
3. In the Excel Options dialog box, click on the ‘Choose Commands from’ drop-down
4. Click on Macros. This will show you a list of all the macros in the workbook (including the ones in PERSONAL.XLSB)
5. Select the macro code to unhide sheets
6. Click on the Add button
7. Click OK.

The above steps would add this macro code to unhide sheets in the Quick Access Toolbar.

Now, whenever you get a workbook that has some sheets hidden, you just need to click on the code icon in the QAT and it will instantly unhide all sheets in one go.

Unhide Sheets With Specific Text in the Name

With VBA, you can also unhide sheets based on the name.

For example, suppose you have a workbook that contains sheets with years in the name and you want to unhide all the ones where the year is 2020.

You can use the below code to unhide all the sheets with the text 2020 in it:

Sub UnhideSheetsWithSpecificText()
For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
    If InStr(ws.Name, "2020") > 0 Then
        ws.Visible = xlSheetVisible
    End If
Next ws
End Sub

The above uses the For Next loop to go through each worksheet in the workbook. The IF Then condition then checks the name of the worksheet and if it contains the specified text (which is 2020 in this code), it will change the visible property to make it visible.

And if the name doesn’t contain the specified text, it will leave it as is.

You can also modify this code to hide sheets based on the text in the name.

For example, if you want to quickly hide all the worksheets where the name contains the text ‘2020’ in it, you can use the below code:

Sub HideSheetsWithSpecificText()
For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
    If InStr(ws.Name, "2020") > 0 Then
        ws.Visible = xlHidden
    End If
Next ws
End Sub

Note: You can save this code in a regular module inside VB Editor or you can save this in the Personal Macro Workbook. In case you save it in a regular module and need to use it again later, you need to save the workbook as a macro-enabled workbook (.XLSM format).

Unhide Selected Sheets (Based on User Selection)

You can also use VBA to give the user the flexibility to choose whether to unhide a sheet or not.

This can be done by showing a message box that asks the user to select whether to unhide a sheet or not. If selected, it unhides that sheet, else it moves to the next one.

Below is the code that will do this:

Sub UnhideSheetsUserSelection()
For Each sh In ThisWorkbook.Sheets
    If sh.Visible <> True Then
        Result = MsgBox("Do You Want to Unhide " & sh.Name, vbYesNo)
        If Result = vbYes Then sh.Visible = True
    End If
Next sh
End Sub

The above code goes through each sheet in the workbook and checks whether it’s already visible or not. If it’s hidden, then it shows the message box with the name of the worksheet.

As a user, you can now decide whether you want to keep this sheet hidden or unhide it.

This can work well if you have some worksheets that are hidden and you want to take a call for every sheet individually.

Note: You can save this code in a regular module inside VB Editor or you can save this in the Personal Macro Workbook. In case you save it in a regular module and need to use it again later, you need to save the workbook as a macro-enabled workbook (.XLSM format).

Here is a tutorial where I show how to save the code in the regular module in Excel (search for the ‘Where to put this code’ section in this article)

Unhide All or Selected Sheets Using Custom View

This is a less known method in case you want to quickly unhide all the worksheets (or some selected worksheets).

‘Custom View’ is functionality in Excel that allows you to create and save views that you can quickly resort to with a click of a button.

For example, suppose you have an Excel workbook with 10 worksheets. You can create a view where all these 10 sheets are visible. In the future, if you have some sheets hidden and you want o go back to the view where all the sheets were visible, you can do that by selecting the already saved custom view.

Don’t worry, you don’t lose any changes you made after creating the custom view. All custom view does is takes you back to the Excel view when you created it. So if some worksheets were visible when you created the view and are now hidden, selecting that custom view would unhide these sheets.

The intended use of Custom View is to allow users to create different views. For example, if you’re an analyst, you can create different views for different departments in your organization. So you can have a specific set of worksheets (or cells/rows/columns) visible for one department and another set for another department. Once you have these views, instead of changing this manually, you simply activate the view for a department and it will show you worksheets (or rows/columns) relevant for them only.

Below are the steps to create a custom view in Excel:

1. Unhide all the worksheets to begin with
2. Click the View tab
3. Click on Custom Views
4. In the Custom Views dialog box, click on Add. This will open the Add view dialog box
5. Enter any name for this view where all the sheets (or selected sheets) are visible
6. Click OK.

Once the view is created, you can anytime ask Excel to activate this view (which would make all those sheets visible that were visible when you created the view).

Below are the steps to show/activate a custom view:

1.  Click the View tab
2. Click on Custom Views
3. In the Custom Views dialog box, select the view that you want to show
4. Click on Show button

This would instantly unhide sheets and show those that were visible when you created that custom view.

Unhiding Sheets that are ‘Very Hidden’

Sometimes, despite having some hidden sheets in your workbook, you would not be able to unhide it manually.

This could be because these sheets are not just hidden – these are ‘very hidden’.

When you have hidden sheets in a workbook and you right-click on any tab name, you would see the option to ‘Unhide’ sheets. But if you have sheets are ‘very hidden’ or if there are no hidden sheets, then you would not be able to use this option (it will be greyed out).

You can still unhide these ‘very hidden’ sheets by using the VBA code that we have covered above.

Just copy-paste the below code in the immediate window and hit enter and it would instantly unhide all the sheets (hidden as well as very hidden).

For each Sheet in Thisworkbook.Sheets: Sheet.Visible=True: Next Sheet

I also have a full tutorial on how to hide sheets and make these very hidden (in case you’re interested in learning)

You may also like the following Excel tutorials:

• How to Quickly Unhide COLUMNS in Excel
• How to Rename a Sheet in Excel
• Delete Rows Based on a Cell Value (or Condition) in Excel
• Hide Zero Values in Excel
• Working with Worksheets using Excel VBA
• How to Group Worksheets in Excel
• How to Delete All Hidden Rows and Columns in Excel
• Excel Tabs/Sheets Not Showing – How to Fix?

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

This Excel tutorial explains how to unhide a sheet in Excel 2016 (with screenshots and step-by-step instructions).

Question: In Microsoft Excel 2016, how do I unhide a sheet that has been hidden?

Answer: You can view all of the sheet names as tabs along the bottom of the document. In this example, Sheet2 is hidden. This is the sheet that we want to unhide.

To unhide Sheet2, right-click on the name of any sheet and select Unhide from the popup menu.

When the Unhide window appears, it will list all of the hidden sheets. Select the sheet that you wish to unhide. In this example, we’ve selected Sheet2. Click on the OK button.

Now when you return to your spreadsheet, Sheet2 should be visible.

Now that you know how to unhide a worksheet in Excel manually, let’s see quicker methods to achieve this in case you have various hidden worksheets.

“for each Sheet in Thisworkbook.Sheets: Sheet.Visible=True: Next Sheet”

Hady is Content Lead at Layer.

Hady has a passion for tech, marketing, and spreadsheets. Besides his Computer Science degree, he has vast experience in developing, launching, and scaling content marketing processes at SaaS startups.

Originally published May 24 2022, Updated Mar 22 2023

Unhiding sheets in Excel is easy. A workbook must contain at least one visible worksheet. To unhide sheets, execute the following steps.

Note: if your worksheet tabs are missing, please go to step 5.

1. Right click a sheet tab and then click Unhide.

The Unhide dialog box appears.

2. Hold down CTRL to select multiple sheets.

Note: in older versions of Excel, you can only unhide one sheet at a time (see step 9 for a workaround).

3. Click OK.

Result.

4. To hide sheets, hold down CTRL to select multiple sheet tabs, right click one of the sheet tabs, and then click Hide.

If your worksheet tabs are missing, execute the following steps.

5. Hover over the left edge of the scrollbar and drag the arrow to the right to show all worksheet tabs.

6. In the screenshot below, there’s not a single visible worksheet tab and there’s no arrow to show all worksheet tabs. The sheet tabs are gone.

To show the sheet tabs, execute the following steps.

7. On the File tab, click Options, Advanced, scroll down to Display options for this workbook and check ‘Show sheet tabs’.

8. Click OK.

You can also use VBA to hide worksheets. You can assign the property xlSheetHidden or xlSheetVeryHidden. You cannot use the Unhide dialog box to unhide very hidden sheets!

9. The following codes lines unhide all hidden and very hidden sheets.

Tip: download the Excel file and try it yourself. You can learn how to run this procedure here: Run Code from a Module.