View tab on excel

If you can’t see the worksheet tabs at the bottom of your Excel workbook, browse the table below to find the potential cause and solution.

Note: The image in this article are from Excel 2016. Your view might be slightly different if you have a different version, but the functionality is the same (unless otherwise noted).

Cause	Solution
The window sizing is keeping the tabs hidden.	If you restore multiple windows in Excel, ensure that the windows are not overlapping. Perhaps the top of an Excel window is covering the worksheet tabs of another window. The status bar has been moved all the way up to the Formula Bar. Tabs can also disappear if your computer screen resolution is higher than that of the person who last saved the workbook. Try maximizing the window to reveal the tabs. Simply double-click the window title bar. If you still don’t see the tabs, click View > Arrange All > Tiled > OK.
The Show sheet tabs setting is turned off.	First ensure that the Show sheet tabs is enabled. To do this, For all other Excel versions, click File > Options > Advanced—in under Display options for this workbook—and then ensure that there is a check in the Show sheet tabs box.
The horizontal scroll bar obscures the tabs.	Hover the mouse pointer at the edge of the scrollbar until you see the double-headed arrow (see the figure). Click-and-drag the arrow to the right, until you see the complete tab name and any other tabs.
The worksheet itself is hidden.	To unhide a worksheet, right-click on any visible tab and then click Unhide. In the Unhide dialog box, click the sheet you want to unhide and then click OK.

Need more help?

You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community or get support in the Answers community.

Bottom line: Learn time saving tips and shortcuts for selecting and copying worksheet tabs.  Includes a few simple VBA macros.

Skill level: Beginner

Tips for Navigating Worksheet Tabs

If you work with Excel files that contain a lot of sheets, then you know how time consuming it can be to work with the tabs.  So in this post I share a few quick tips and shortcuts to save time with navigating your workbook.

#1 Copy Worksheets with Ctrl+Drag

This is one of my favorite shortcuts that every Excel user should know.  The quickest way to make a duplicate copy of a sheet is using the Ctrl+Drag method.  Here are the steps.

1. Left-click and hold on the sheet you want to copy.
2. Press and hold the Ctrl key.  A plus symbol will appear in the sheet mouse icon.
3. Drag the sheet to the right until the down arrow appears to the right of the sheet.
4. Release the left mouse button.  Then release the Ctrl key.

I broke it out into 4 steps, but it really feels like 2 steps once you get the hang of it.  It’s much faster than right-clicking the tab and going to the Move or Copy… menu.

You can also use this technique when multiple sheets are selected.  More on that below.

If you are in need of a high-five or pat on the back (and who isn’t), then feel free to share this one with your boss and co-workers. 🙂

#2 Navigating to the First or Last Sheet

If your workbook has a lot of tabs then you might want to quickly navigate to the first or last sheet in the workbook.

In Excel 2010 and earlier this was easy.  There were dedicated buttons to scroll to the first or last sheet in the workbook.

Starting in Excel 2013 we lost the dedicated buttons to navigate to the first or last sheet.   These actions were consolidated into the sheet navigation buttons in the bottom left corner of the application window.

You now have to hold the Ctrl key when clicking the sheet navigation buttons to scroll to the first or last sheet.  You can see this tip by hovering your mouse over the buttons.

So yes, this action now requires two hands unless you have really really long fingers or use a left-handed mouse.  Something to brag about lefties…  😉

Once you have scrolled to the front/back, you can then click the first/last sheet to select it.

If you want to speed up this process, checkout my post on how to Create Keyboard Shortcuts to Select the First or Last Sheet in Excel.  This is much faster than scrolling, then selecting the first/last sheet with the mouse.

#3 Select Next or Previous Sheet

If you’re a keyboard shortcut lover, like me, here are a few shortcuts to quickly move between sheets.

The keyboard shortcut to select the next sheet is: Ctrl+Page Down

The keyboard shortcut to select the previous sheet is: Ctrl+Page Up

These are great if you are toggling back and forth between two sheets.  Just move the sheets next to each other.  You can then copy/paste or audit the sheets without having to navigate all over the workbook.

Having the right keyboard can be important for us Excel users.  Especially when you are using a laptop keyboard.  Checkout my post on Best Keyboards for Excel Keyboard Shortcuts to learn more.

#4 Select Multiple Sheets

We can use the Ctrl and Shift keys to select multiple sheets.

Hold the  Ctrl key and left-click sheet tabs to add them to the group of select sheets.

You can also hold the Shift key and left-click a sheet to select all sheets from the active sheet to the sheet you clicked.

The keyboard shortcuts to select multiple sheets are Ctrl+Shift+Page Up / Page Down. This will select the previous/next sheet. You can continue to press this shortcut to select multiple sheets.

IMPORTANT NOTE About Selecting Multiple Sheets

When multiple sheets are selected, any changes you make the active sheet will also be applied to ALL selected sheets.  This is a great time saver if you want to modify the value, formula, or formatting of specific cells on multiple sheets at the same time.

However, if you forget to ungroup the sheets (see tip #6) then you could really mess up your workbook.  I’ve done this more times than I’d like to admit.

When you have multiple sheets selected, the word “Group” appears after the file name in the header of the Excel application window.  This is not much of a warning though.  I wish the application would turn a different color, or do a better job of warning us.

If you make a lot of edits to a sheet without realizing multiple sheets are selected it can spell disaster.  Sometimes you won’t be able to undo the changes, and then have to pray that you saved the file.

#5 Select All Sheets

To select all sheets in the workbook, right-click any tab and choose Select All Sheets.

The same rule applies here.  Any edits you make to the active sheet will also be made on all of the other selected sheets.

#6 Deselect (Ungroup) Sheets

To deselect multiple sheets you can just click on any tab that is not in the current selection.

You can also right-click any of the selected tabs and choose Ungroup Sheets.  The tab that you right-click will become the active sheet.

 #7 Hide & Unhide Multiple Sheets

To hide multiple sheets:

1. Select the sheets using the methods mentioned above.
2. Right-click one of the selected tabs.
3. Choose Hide.

The sheets will be hidden.

Unfortunately, unhiding multiple sheets is not directly possible in Excel.  When you right-click a tab and choose Unhide, you can only select one sheet from the list of hidden sheets in the Unhide window.

I have a post on 3 Ways to Unhide Multiple Sheets in Excel that explains techniques for unhiding sheets with a macro.

Bonus Tip: Sheet List

If your workbook contains a lot of sheets then you can right-click the tab navigation buttons to see a list of all visible sheets.  You can then double-click a sheet in the list to jump to it.

This list only shows the visible sheets in the workbook, and there is no way to search it.

So, I developed The Tab Hound Add-in to solve both of these problems and a lot more.

The add-in is packed with features (including unhiding multiple sheets) that make it faster & easier to navigate and modify the sheets in your workbooks.

I developed Tab Hound with VBA and the tools that are built into Excel.  If you’d like to learn more about macros & VBA then checkout my free training webinar that is going on right now.

Click here to learn more and register for the webinar

Conclusion

I hope those tips help save some time out of your day.  What are your favorite shortcuts for working with sheet tabs?  Please leave a comment below with your suggestions, or any questions.

Thank you! 🙂

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

In this article, we will learn about Excel Ribbons or Excel Tabs?

Scenario:

Once you open the excel software from the program menu, the first thing that you would notice is a large screen displayed. Since this is your first workbook, you will not notice any recently opened workbooks. There are various options that you can choose from; however, this being your first tutorial, I want you to open the Blank Workbook Once you click on the Blank workbook, you will notice the Blank Workbook opens up in the default format.

What are Ribbons in Excel
Ribbons are designed to help you quickly find the command that you want to execute in Excel 2016. Ribbons are divided into logical groups called Tabs, and Each tab has its own set of unique functions to perform. There are various tabs – Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Date, Review, and View.

How to Collapse (Minimize) Ribbons
If you do not want to see the commands in the Ribbons, you can always Collapse or Minimize Ribbons. For this RIGHT-click on Ribbon Area, and you will see various options available here. Here you need to choose “Collapse the Ribbon.” Once you choose this, the visible groups go away, and they are now hidden under the tab. You can always click on the tab to show the commands.

How to Customize Ribbons
Many times it is handy to customize Ribbons containing the commands that you frequently use. This helps save a lot of time and effort while navigating the excel workbook. In order to customize Excel Ribbons, RIGHT click on the Ribbon area and choose, customize the Ribbon
Once the dialog box opens up, click on the New Tab. Rename the New Tab and the New Group as per your liking. You can select the list of commands that you want to include in this new tab from the left-hand side. Once done, you will notice your customized tab appears in the Ribbon along with the other tabs.

What is Quick Access Toolbar
Quick Access Toolbar is a universal toolbar that is always visible and is not dependent on the tab that you are working with. For example, if you are in the Home Tab, you will see commands not only related to Home Tab but also the Quick Access Toolbar on the top executing these commands easily. Likewise, if you are in any other tab, say “Insert,” then again, you will have the same Quick Access Toolbar.

How to Customize Quick Access Toolbar
In order to customize the Quick Access Toolbar, RIGHT click on any part of the Ribbon and you will see the following. Once you click on Customize Quick Access Toolbar, you get the dialog box from where you can select the set of commands you want to see in the Quick Access Toolbar. The new quick access toolbar now contains the newly added commands. So as you can see, this is pretty simple.

What are the Tabs?
Tabs are nothing but various options available on the Ribbon. These can be used for easy navigation of commands that you desire to use.

Home Tab

Clipboard – This Clipboard Group is primarily used for Cut copy and paste. This means that if you want to transfer data from one place to another, you have two choices, either COPY (preserves the data in the original location) or CUT (deletes the data from the original location).  Also, there are options of Paste Special, which implies copy in the desired format. We will discuss the details of these later in the Excel tutorials. There is also Format Painter Excel, which is used to copy the format from the original cell location to the destination cell location.

Fonts – This font group within the Home tab is used for choosing the desired Font and size. There are hundreds of fonts available in the dropdown which we can use for. In addition, you can change the font size from small to large, depending on your requirements. Also helpful is the feature of Bold (B), Italics (I), and Underline (U) of the fonts.

Alignment – As the name suggests, this group is used for alignment of tabs – Top, Middle, or Bottom alignment of text within the cell. Also, there are other standard alignment options like Left, middle, and right alignment. There is also an orientation option that can be used to place the text vertically or diagonally. Merge and Center can be used to combine more than one cell and place its content in the middle. This is a great feature to use for table formatting etc. Wrap text can be used when there is a lot of content in the cell, and we want to make all the text visible.

Number – This group provides options for displaying number format. There are various formats available – General, accounting, percentage, comma style in excel, etc. You can also increase and decrease the decimals using this group.

Styles – This is an interesting addition to Excel. You can have various styles for cells – Good, Bad, and Neutral. There are other sets of styles available for Data and Models like Calculation, Check, Warning, etc. In addition, you can make use of different Titles and Heading options available within Styles. The format Table allows you to quickly convert the mundane data into the aesthetically pleasing data table. Conditional formatting is used to format cells based on certain predefined conditions. These are very helpful in spotting the patterns across an excel sheet.

Cells – This group is used to modify the cell – its height and width etc. Also, you can hide and protect the cell using Format Feature. You can also insert and delete new cells and rows from this group.

Editing – This group within the Home Tab is useful for Editing the data on an excel sheet. The most prominent of the commands here is the Find and Replace in Excel Command. Also, you can use the sort feature to analyze your data – sort from A to Z or Z to A, or you can do a custom sort here.

Insert Tab
Tables – This group provides a superior way to organize the data. You can use Table to sort, filter, and format the data within the sheet. In addition, you can also use Pivot Tables to analyze complex data very easily. We will be using Pivot Tables in our later tutorials.
Illustrations – This group provides a way to insert pictures, shapes, or artwork into excel. You can insert the pictures either directly from the computer, or you can also use Online Picture Option to search for relevant pictures. In addition, shapes provide additional ready-made square, circle, arrow kind of shapes that can be used in excel. SmartArt provides an awesome graphical representation to visually communicate data in the form of List, organizational charts, Venn diagram to process diagrams. Screenshot can be used to quickly insert a screenshot of any program that is open on the computer.

Apps – You can use this group to insert an existing App into excel. You can also purchase an App from the Store section. Bing Maps app allows you to use the location data from a given column and plot it on Bing Maps. Also, there is a new feature called People Data, which allows you to transform boring data into an exciting one.

Charts – This is one of the most useful features in Excel

It helps you visualize the data in a graphical format. Recommended charts allow Excel to come up with the best possible graphical combination. In addition, you can make graphs on your own, and excel provides various options like Pie-chart, Line Chart, Column Chart in Excel, Bubble Chart k in Excel, combo chart in excel, Radar Chart in Excel, and Pivot Charts in Excel.

Sparklines – Sparklines are cute tiny charts that are made on the number of data and can be displayed with these cells. There are different options available for sparklines like Line Sparkline, Column Sparkline, and Win/Loss Sparkline. We will discuss this in detail in later posts.

Filters – There are two types of filters available – Slicer allows you to filter the data visually and can be used to filter tables, pivot tables data, etc. The Timeline filter allows you to filter the dates interactively.

Hyperlink – This is a great tool to provide hyperlinks from the excel sheet to an external URL or files. Hyperlinks can also be used to create a navigation structure with the excel sheet that is easy to use.

Text – This group is used to text in the desired format. For example, if you want to have the header and footer, you can use this group. In addition, WordArt allows you to use different styling for text. You can also create your signature using the Signature line feature.

Symbols – This primarily consists of two parts. First is  Equation – this allows you to write mathematical equations that we cannot ordinarily write in an Excel sheet. Second is Symbols are special character or symbols that we may want to insert in the excel sheet for better representation

Page Layout Tab
Themes – Themes allow you to change the style and visual look of excel. You can choose various styles available from the menu. You can also customize the colors, fonts, and effects in the excel workbook.
Page Setup – This is an important group primarily used along with printing an excel sheet. You can choose margins for the print. In addition, you can choose your printing orientation from Portrait to Landscape. Also, you can choose the size of paper like A3, A4, Letterhead, etc. The print area allows you to see the print area within the excel sheet and is helpful in making the necessary adjustments. We can also add a break where we want the next page to begin in the printed copy. Also, you can add a background to the worksheet to create a style. Print Titles are like a header and footer in excel that we want to be repeated on each printed copy of the excel sheet.

Scale to Fit – This option is used to stretch or shrink the printout of the page to a percentage of the original size. You can also shrink the width as well as height to fit in a certain number of pages.

Sheet Options – Sheet options is another useful feature for printing. If we want to print the grid, then we can check the print gridlines option. If we want to print the Row and column numbers in the excel sheet, we can also do the same using this feature.

Arrange – Here, we have different options for objects inserted in Excel like Bringforward, Send Backward, Selection Pane, Align, Group Objects, and Rotate.

Formulas Tab
Function Library – This is a very useful group containing all the formulas that one uses in excel. This group is subdivided into important functions like Financial Functions, Logical Functions, Date & Timing, Lookup & References, Maths and Trigonometry, and other functions. One can also make use of Insert Function capabilities to insert the function in a cell.
Defined Names – This feature is a fairly advanced but useful feature. It can be used to name the cell, and these named cells can be called from any part of the worksheet without working about its exact locations.

Formula Auditing – This feature is used for auditing the flow of formulas and its linkages. It can trace the precedents (origin of data set) and can also show which dataset is dependent on this. Show formula can also be used to debug errors in the formula. The Watch window in excel is also a useful function to keep a tab on their values as you update other formulas and datasets in the excel sheet.

Calculations –  By default, the option selected for calculation is automatic. However, one can also change this option to manual.

Data Tab
Get External Data – This option is used to import external data from various sources like Access, Web, Text, SQL Server, XML, etc.
Power Query – This is an advanced feature and is used to combine data from multiple sources and present it in the desired format.

Connections – This feature is used to refresh the excel sheet when the data in the current excel sheet is coming from outside sources. You can also display the external links as well as edit those links from this feature.

Sort & Filter – This feature can be used to sort the data from AtoZ or Z to Z, and also you can filter the data using the drop-down menus. Also, one can choose advanced features to filter using complex criteria.

Data Tools – This is another group that is very useful for advanced excel users. One can create various scenario analyses using What If analysis – Data Tables, Goal Seek in Excel, and Scenario Manager. Also, one can convert Text to Column, remove duplicates and consolidate from this group.

Forecast – This Forecast function can be used to predict the values-based on historical values.

Outline – One can easily present the data in an intuitive format using the Group and Ungroup options from this.

Review Tab

Proofing – Proofing is an interesting feature in Excel that allows you to run spell checks in the excel. In addition to spell checks, one can also make use of thesaurus if you find the right word. There is also a research button that helps you navigate the encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc. to perform tasks better.

Language – If you need to translate your excel sheet from English to any other language, then you can use this feature.

Comments – Comments are very helpful when you want to write an additional note for important cells. This helps the user understand clearly the reasons behind your calculations etc.

Changes – If you want to keep track of the changes that are made, then one can use the Track Changes option here. Also, you can protect the worksheet or the workbook using a password from this option.

View Tab

Workbook Views – You can choose the viewing option of the excel sheet from this group. You can view the excel sheet in the default normal view, or you can choose Page Break view, Page Layout view, or any other custom view of your choice.

Show – This feature can be used to show or not show Formula bars, grid lines, or Heading in the excel sheet.

zoom – Sometimes, an excel sheet may contain a lot of data, and you may want to change zoom in or zoom out desired areas of the excel sheet.

Window – The new window is a helpful feature that allows the user to open the second window and work on both at the same time. Also, freeze panes are another useful feature that allows freezing of particular rows and columns such that they are always visible even when one scrolls to the extreme positions. You can also split the worksheet into two parts for separate navigation.

Macros – This is again a fairly advanced feature, and you can use this feature to automate certain tasks in Excel Sheets. Macros are nothing but a recorder of actions taken in excel, and it has the capability to execute the same actions again if required.

Hope this article about What are Excel Ribbon or Excel Tabs? is explanatory. Find more articles on calculating values and related Excel formulas here. If you liked our blogs, share them with your friends on Facebook. And also you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We would love to hear from you, do let us know how we can improve, complement or innovate our work and make it better for you. Write to us at info@exceltip.com.

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This post will guide you how to display or hide worksheet tab bar in Excel. By default, Excel displays each sheet tab at the bottom of the window. And you can click each sheet tab to quickly select that sheet in your workbook. How to quickly turn off or on in your workbook.

#1 click File tab, and select Options from the popup menu list. The Excel Options dialog will open.

#2 click Advanced menu, check or uncheck the Show sheet tabs checkbox in the Display options for this workbook. Click Ok button.

You will see that worksheet tab bar will be displayed or hidden in your workbook.