How to Hide and Unhide a Workbook in Excel

- Written by Puneet

When you are working with multiple Excel workbooks (files), instead of closing them you can hide them and then unhide them back when you need.

In Excel, you have the option to hide and unhide a workbook just by clicking a button, and as I said, hiding a workbook doesn’t mean you are closing it.

In this tutorial, we will use the option of hiding and unhiding a workbook.

hide-a-workbook

Hide a Workbook (Excel File)

Right now, I have four workbooks open in my Excel, and I want to hide two workbooks out of these four. You can use the following steps to perform it.

  1. First, you need to go to the workbook that you want to hide.
  2. After that, go to the View Tab.
  3. And in the View tab, you have the “Window” group where you have the Hide button.
  4. In the end, click on the hide button to hide the workbook which is active now.
view-tab-hidden-button

And the moment you click the “Hide” button it seems like the file is closed, but it’s hidden now.

Unhide a Workbook (Excel File)

And once you have a workbook hidden you can unhide it back using the Unhide button just below the hide button.

unhide-dialog-box
  1. First, go to the View Tab.
  2. After that, in the Window group, there’s a button called “unhide” (This button get activates when you have one or more workbooks hidden).
  3. Now, click on the unhide button to get the dialog box to unhide the workbook.
  4. In the end, from the dialog box, select the workbook that you want to unhide and click OK.

Keyboard Shortcuts to Hide and Unhide a Workbook

You can also use the keyboard shortcuts to hide and unhide a workbook:

  • Alt ⇢ W ⇢ H: To unhide a workbook.
  • Alt ⇢ W ⇢ U: To open the unhide dialog box to unhide a workbook from there.