How to Remove a Header in Excel (Fast & Easy)

Headers are added to Excel sheets to add more value to the data in Excel (especially when printed).

They appear on the top of each sheet (can be the same for all or different first page etc.). You’d see them around generally with information like the chapter/section name and page numbers. They add great sense to documents.

However, they might be a nuisance sometimes if you no longer want it there. In this tutorial, we will see different ways how to remove a header in Microsoft Excel. And not only removing but also hiding/minimizing its appearance from an MS Excel sheet.

Grab your free practice workbook for this guide here and read with me till the end to learn all these methods 📚

Table of Contents

What Are Headers?

Excel headers might sound like an alien concept to you. But just like in Microsoft Word, a header in an Excel worksheet is a section on the top where you can populate information to appear on the top.

Since a header is a concept specific to a page (it appears on the top of a page and you can choose to have similar or different headers for newer pages), it will not appear in the standard worksheet view 🔎

As soon as you add headers to an Excel sheet, it will take the Page Layout View or the Print View both of which split the sheet into multiple sections and each section is the size of a page.

This is how it looks under the Page Layout View.

As soon as you switch to the Normal view mode, the data of your sheet will stay but the headers will no longer be visible (they are not deleted or removed but only invisible in Normal view mode).

However, when you launch the print preview for this document (press Ctrl + P), you will see the headers on the top of each printed page 🖨

Headers are often added to Excel worksheets by users to add page numbers to each page, current date or time, document title, author name, section name, headings or custom texts of such nature.

P.S: These headers are different from column headers (i.e. A, B, C) and row headers (i.e. 1,2, 3 and so on).

Removing a header in Excel

Once you’ve added headers to your Excel sheet, they might seem unremovable or alien, especially if your eyes are not habitual of having them right there on the top of your sheet.

But don’t worry, if you no longer want headers there in your sheet, there are different ways how you can get rid of them depending upon if you want to delete/remove them permanently or only want them to go away from the sheet’s face 👼

Deleting a header in Excel

To delete a header in Excel entirely, follow these steps:

Step 1) Go to the Page Layout tab > Page Setup group.

Step 2) Click the small arrow at the bottom-right corner of the Page Setup group.

This will open the Page Setup dialog box 🚀

Step 3) In the Page Setup dialog box, go to the Header/Footer tab.

Step 4) In the Header drop-down menu, select none. Right now it is a custom header.

Step 5) Click Okay.

The headers will be deleted when you go back to the sheet.

Pro Tip!

This method explains how to delete a header from a single Excel spreadsheet. To delete it from multiple sheets at the same time, all you need to do is select those sheets before performing these steps.

• To select multiple adjacent sheets:

Click on the first sheet’s tab, hold down the Shift key, and click on the last sheet’s tab.

• To select multiple non-adjacent sheets:

Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the sheet tabs of the sheets from where you want to delete the headers individually.

• To select all worksheets:

Right-click any sheet tab and choose Select All Sheets from the context menu.

Once selected, go to any sheet, launch the Page Setup dialog box, and set the header to none as demonstrated above.

Another way to do this is 👇

Step 1) Double-click on the header to activate it.

Step 2) Select the contents of the header.

Step 3) Press the Delete/backspace key.

Step 4) Close header by pressing the Esc key or clicking somewhere else on the sheet.

Since the header content is deleted, when you switch back to the Print Preview mode, no headers will appear 🙈

Advanced Header Manipulation in Excel

If you don’t want to delete the header from your Excel sheet but only want it to disappear from the sheet’s face, you can adjust it in two ways (step-by-step explained below) 🧾

To hide it from the sheet entirely:

Step 1) Go to the View tab > Workbook Views group > Normal View.

The Normal workbook view mode hides the header space in the working view.

However, the header is still there in the background.

To only minimize the header space on the sheet’s face without making it disappear entirely:

Step 1) Go to the Page Layout tab > Page Setup group > Margins > Custom Margins.

This will launch the Page Setup dialog box.

Step 2) Go to the Margins tab.

Step 3) Set the margin size for Top to a smaller value (say 0.25).

Step 4) Click okay to apply the new margin settings.

This will minimize the header space. You can similarly reduce the footer area by minimizing the bottom margins 📪

Conclusion

This guide illustrates how to delete or remove a header in Excel using multiple ways.

And if you’re not up to deleting but only want to hide it for the time being, we have also shown you ways how you can switch view modes to make the header disappear or minimize it.

Use the free practice workbook for this guide to try these methods out and see if they suit your needs. To master how to insert headers/footers in Excel, check out the following guides by Spreadsheeto.

• How to Add and Change Headers/Footers in Excel Sheet
• How to Name Columns in Excel (The Easiest Method)