How to Delete a Sheet in Excel: The 3 Best Methods (2024)

You just realized that there is a worksheet in your Excel workbook that you don’t need. What do you do about it?

You simply delete it like it’s no big deal.

But what if you need to delete multiple sheets in your workbook? 🤔

That’s no biggie, too 😉

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the three best methods of how to delete your sheets in Excel.

Delete a sheet with right-click

This is the most straightforward way to delete a sheet in Excel.

It’s easy as 1-2-3!

Go to the Sheet tab located at the bottom of your Excel window. You’ll see all the sheets in your Excel workbook.

01 all the sheets in the sheet tab

To delete a worksheet,

  1. Right-click on the sheet tab that you want to delete (here, Sheet 1)
02 right-click the sheet tab

The right-click menu will appear.

  1. Select Delete.
03 select delete to delete a worksheet in Excel

When you click delete, Microsoft Excel sends you this message 👇

04 simply delete sheets

If you’re sure to delete the sheet, click the Delete button.

Note that once you do this, your worksheet will be permanently deleted.

There is no way to get it back.

Now, the sheet is deleted 😊

05 active worksheet

Delete a sheet from the Home tab

You can easily delete a sheet in Excel from the Home Tab, too.

Here’s how.

  1. Select the sheet tab that you want to delete.
06 selected worksheet
  1. Go to the Home tab.
07 click home tab
  1. In the Cells group, click the drop-down arrow below Delete.
08 delete option
  1. Select Delete Sheet.
09 click delete sheet

Microsoft Excel then again sends you this message.

10 permanently delete a worksheet

Finally, click Delete.

Deleting a single sheet is no big deal.

But what if you want to delete multiple worksheets in your workbook? 🤔

Delete multiple sheets at once

Deleting multiple sheets in Excel is a great time saver so it’s only important to know how 😉

To delete multiple sheets, you first need to select the sheets you want to delete.

  1. Select the first sheet tab you want to delete (here, Sheet 2).
11 selected sheet
  1. Hold down the SHIFT key and click the tab for the last sheet that you want to delete (here, Sheet 4)
12 select multiple worksheets

This groups all the sheets you selected, including the Sheet 3 tab.

Now, you can go ahead and…

  1. Right-click on the sheet tabs.
  2. Select Delete.
13 delete sheets

When Microsoft Excel sends you the message, just click the Delete button.

And it will delete the selected worksheets at once 👍

Delete multiple sheets (non-adjacent)

The SHIFT key is one powerful key to select adjacent sheets and delete them at once.

But what if you need to delete worksheets that are not adjacent to each other? 😟

Well, the CTRL key is the key 🔑

The CTRL key can also select sheets one by one but it’s best when you want to select non-adjacent worksheets (cells, rows, and columns too).

Let’s do it 💪

  1. Click the tab for the first sheet (in our example, Sheet 2)
14 current sheet
  1. Hold down the CTRL key while you click the tabs of the other sheets that you want to delete (in our example, sheets 4 and 6)
15 delete worksheets
  1. Right-click the sheet tabs.
  2. Select Delete.

Click the Delete button when the Microsoft Excel dialog box pops up.

And it will delete all the sheets you’ve selected 👍

Again, when you delete a sheet in Excel, all data in that worksheet will permanently be deleted.

You can’t undo it. So, make sure that you are deleting only the sheet that you really want to remove.

Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist

That’s it – Now what?

Good job! 🙌

Deleting worksheets is one of the basic things Excel users should know. Now, you learned not only one but the three best methods of how to delete a sheet in Excel.

Excel helps you organize your data in your sheets and workbooks. You only need to learn how to make Excel’s powerful functions and features work for you 😊

Start learning Excel today!

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Frequently asked questions

The keyboard shortcut to delete a sheet in Excel is Alt + H + D + S.

Make sure you press one key after another to delete the active sheet or the selected sheets.

One of the main reasons why you can’t delete a sheet in Excel is that your Excel workbook is protected.

To unprotect the workbook, go to the Review Tab and click Protect Workbook. It will have you enter a password to unprotect it. Once done, you can delete the sheets.