How to completely Hide an Excel Worksheet

Situatie

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 for drop-down list option and other controls, leave only the most important sheets visible, or conceal information you don’t want others to see, you can make worksheets very hidden in Excel. Taking this step reduces the chances of other people making those worksheets visible again.

Solutie

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

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”.

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

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 prefer using Excel keyboard shortctus, press Alt > V > Ctrl+R.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Tip solutie

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