Summary

Excel has three levels of worksheet visibility: visible, hidden, and very hidden. While many people know about hiding and unhiding worksheets by right-clicking the tab area at the bottom of the workbook, this is only an intermediate way to remove Excel sheets from view.

Whether you want to tidy up your workbook tabs, have a dedicated sheet fordrop-down list optionsand other controls, leave only the most important sheets visible, or conceal information you don’t want others to see, you’re able to make worksheetsveryhidden in Excel. Taking this step reduces the chances of other people making those worksheets visible again.

Excel’s Visual Basic button in the Developer tab on the ribbon.

Here’s how you can do this.

you may only apply this option to a worksheet if your Excel file has at least one other visible tab.

Before you start, make sure your workbook is saved by pressing Ctrl+S.

The Project Explorer option in the View tab of Excel’s VBA editor ribbon.

Now, press Alt+11 to open the Visual Basics For Applications (VBA) window, or add the Developer tab to the ribbon and click “Visual Basic.”

The next steps involve activating the necessary panes that enable you to change a worksheet’s visibility status to “Very Hidden.” First, click “View” on the ribbon, then click “Project Explorer.” If you preferusing Excel keyboard shortcuts, press Alt > V > Ctrl+R.

The Properties Window option in the View tab of Excel’s VBA ribbon.-1

Then, click “View” again, and this time, click “Properties Window.” Alternatively, press Alt > V > F4.

Now, in the Project Explorer pane, expand the options until you see a list of the worksheets in your workbook, and click the sheet you want to hide.

Sheet2 is selected in the VBA Project Explorer pane in Excel.

Next, in the Properties window, select “xlsSheetVeryHidden” in the Visible drop-down menu.

Finally, click the “Save” button in the top-left corner of the VBA window, and click “X” in the top-right corner to close it. Alternatively, press Ctrl+S, then Alt+F4.

The SheetVeryHidden option in Excel’s VBA Properties Window for Sheet2.

Now, see that the tab for the very hidden worksheet isn’t visible. What’s more, when you right-click the workbook tab area, the Unhide option is grayed out, as though the workbook doesn’t contain any hidden sheets.

If you havealsohidden sheets by right-clicking one of the tabs and choosing “Hide,” the option to unhide sheetswillbe clickable. However, when you click “Unhide,” any very hidden sheets won’t reappear.

The Save icon in Excel’s VBA editor window.

To show the sheet again, head back to the VBA window by pressing Alt+F11, select the relevant worksheet in the Project Explorer pane, change the Visible status to “xlSheetVisible,” and save and close the VBA window.

Things to Note When Making a Worksheet Very Hidden

Here are a few extra pointers you should note before you go ahead and hide worksheets using this method:

As well as hiding whole worksheets within Excel workbooks, you’re able to alsohide rows and columns within worksheetsby right-clicking the row number or column letter, and selecting “Hide.” To hide multiple adjacent rows or columns, first, click and drag your mouse to select more than one row number or column letter at the same time. On the other hand, to select non-sequential rows and columns to hide, press Ctrl as you click on the row numbers or column letters.

The Unhide option in Excel’s worksheet tab pane is grayed out.

Sheet2 is selected in Excel’s VBA Project Explorer pane, and xlSheetVisible is selected in the Properties window.