How to Hide Worksheets and Tabs in Excel
(With Password)

An Excel workbook can contain multiple worksheets. You can see all the worksheets in the Sheet tabs at the bottom of your Excel workbook window.

But what if you don’t want other users to see all the sheets in the workbook? 👀

You don’t want to delete them as they may contain important data. I mean, why delete them when you can just hide Excel sheets? 😀

This article will guide you step-by-step on how to hide sheets in Excel.

Download this free practice workbook for more hands-on, meaningful learning 👍

Hide sheets in Excel

The most straightforward way to hide your sheets is by using the right-click menu 😊

To start, open your practice workbook.

At the bottom of your Excel workbook window, you’ll find all the sheets in the Sheet tabs just right above the Status bar.

You hide a worksheet because you don’t want others to see it.

Another reason is that you hide a worksheet so that others can’t see it to edit it (accidentally or intentionally).

For example, you don’t want others to edit the Data source sheet tab, so you hide it.

To do that…

1. Right-click the sheet tab you want to hide.
2. Select “Hide” from the right-click menu.

And voila ✨

The Data Source sheet tab is now hidden.

Don’t worry!

The sheet is still there and any data in that sheet wasn’t lost or deleted 😌

The sheet is just hidden or not visible.

Hide sheets from the Home Tab

Another way you can do to hide a sheet in Excel from the Home Tab in your Excel ribbon.

This may be a long way to hide sheets but it’s always good to know how 🧐

1. Click the Sheet tab you want to hide.

2. Go to the Home Tab.

3. Click the Format button in the Cells group.

4. Under Visibility, click Hide/Unhide option.
5. Select Hide Sheet.

And you’ll have the same results ✅

PRO TIP:

There’s a keyboard shortcut you can use to quickly hide the active sheet in your workbook ⚡

Press Alt + H + O + U + S in sequence on your keyboard to hide the active sheet.

Hide multiple sheets

You can hide more than one sheet in Excel.

With the help of the SHIFT key, you can hide multiple sheets all at once 😀

1. Select the first sheet that you want to hide. In our example, it’s Sheet 2.

2. Hold down the Shift key while you click the tab for the last sheet that you want to select.

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

Now, you can go ahead and…

3. Right-click the sheet tabs.
4. Click Hide.

The selected sheet tabs are now hidden 😉

PRO TIP:

The SHIFT key is used to select two or more adjacent sheets faster.

If you want to hide multiple sheets that are non-adjacent, use the CTRL key.

The CTRL key can still be used to select adjacent sheets but it’s best for selecting non-adjacent sheets (and rows, columns, and cells).

To hide multiple sheets that are non-adjacent, you need to first select non-adjacent sheets.

To do that, just click the tab for the first sheet. Then hold down the Ctrl key while you click the tabs of the other sheets that you want to select.

Then repeat the steps above to hide the sheets in Excel 😀

Super-hiding: Hide and lock sheets

Hiding sheets doesn’t mean they won’t be visible forever.

Other users who know how to unhide sheets in Excel can easily do it.

All they have to do is to right-click a sheet tab and click unhide. Like this 👇

The Unhide dialog box appears.

Then they’ll be able to see all the hidden sheets in the workbook and unhide worksheets 😩

You can prevent this by protecting your worksheet tabs 🔒

To completely lock a sheet for viewing, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the sheet you want to protect (In our example, Data Source)
2. Click Hide.

3. Go to the Review Tab.

4. In the Protect Group, select Protect Workbook.

The Protect Workbook dialog box appears.

5. Type a password.
6. Click OK.

7. Confirm Password.
8. Finally, click OK.

Now, when someone attempts to unhide worksheets, they can’t 😉

By protecting the workbook with a password, you lock the workbook structure.

This means that users can’t add, move, delete, or rename worksheets. They also can’t hide a sheet or unhide a sheet in the workbook 👍

Because these commands will now be unavailable for them.

That’s it – Now what?

Well done! 🙌

Learning how to hide sheets in Excel will help you declutter your workbook and help users focus their attention on the worksheets they need to work on 🎯

You can also hide a sheet in Excel using VBA code.

But that’s not the only thing you can do in Excel Visual Basic Editor. With Excel VBA, you’ll see a whole new world of Microsoft Excel.

Let me share this whole new world of Excel with you 😀

Join my FREE Excel advanced user training where you’ll learn the basics of the VBA Editor, what’s a macro, and how to write one, in the easiest and fastest way how 🚀

Other resources

Now that you know how to hide sheets, learn to unhide them. Read our Unhide tabs article for a step-by-step guide.

Are your Excel files protected? Microsoft Excel got you covered on that.

Our Excel Protection article will give you an in-depth tutorial on how to protect your data and files 🔒