Right-click any sheet tab, choose Unhide, pick the sheet name in the dialog and click OK. The same dialog is under Home → Format → Hide & Unhide → Unhide Sheet, or press Alt, H, O, U, H one key after another.
In Microsoft 365 the dialog takes more than one sheet: hold Ctrl and click each name, or click the first name and Shift-click the last to unhide them all in one go. Excel 2019 and earlier unhide one sheet at a time, so repeat the dialog or use the macro below.
If Unhide is greyed out, either no sheet is hidden or the workbook structure is protected. Turn protection off under Review → Protect Workbook, entering the password if one was set.
A sheet that exists but never appears in the list is set to very hidden. Press Alt + F11, select the sheet in the Project window, open the Properties window with F4 and change Visible to -1 - xlSheetVisible.
To unhide every sheet at once in any version, very hidden ones included, run this from a module in the VBA editor:
Sub Unhide_All_Sheets()
Dim sh As Object
For Each sh In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
sh.Visible = xlSheetVisible
Next sh
End SubYou can quickly unhide the single or multiple sheets in Excel. In this tutorial, we will learn to do this with simple steps.
Unhide a Single Sheet in Excel
- First, hover on any of the sheet tabs in your workbook.
- Now, right-click and then click on the “Unhide” option.
- After that, from the dialog box, click on the sheet name you want to unhide.
- In the end, click OK to unhide the sheet.
When you click OK, it will unhide the sheet you selected from the dialog box.
Note: You can also use the same “Unhide…” option from Home > Format > Hide & Unhide > Unhide Sheet.
Unhide All the Hidden Sheets in Excel
In Microsoft 365 and Excel 2021 or later, you can select multiple sheets in the Unhide dialog box to unhide them in one go.
- First, right-click on the sheet tab.
- Now, in the dialog box, press and hold the Ctrl key.
- Next, select multiple sheets, or all of them, from the list.
- In the end, click OK to unhide the selected sheets.
To select a block of sheets, click the first sheet name, then hold the Shift key and click the last one. On a Mac, use the Command key instead of Ctrl to pick sheets one by one.
Once you click OK, it unhides all the sheets you have selected from the dialog box in one go.
In Excel 2019 and earlier versions, the Unhide dialog box lets you pick only one sheet at a time. There, you need to repeat the steps for each sheet, or use the VBA code below to unhide all of them at once.
Unhide a Sheet with a Keyboard Shortcut
Excel doesn’t have a direct shortcut to unhide a sheet, but you can use the ribbon keys to open the same Unhide dialog box.
- First of all, press Alt, then H, O, U and H, one after another (Home > Format > Hide & Unhide > Unhide Sheet).
- After that, use the arrow keys to select the sheet name in the dialog box.
- In the end, press Enter to unhide the sheet.
Unhide All Sheets Using VBA
If you have a lot of hidden sheets, or you’re using a version where you can only unhide one sheet at a time, you can use a simple macro. It loops through every sheet in the active workbook and makes it visible.
Sub UnhideAllSheets()
' Make every sheet in the active workbook visible
Dim sh As Object
For Each sh In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
sh.Visible = xlSheetVisible
Next sh
End Sub
To run it, press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor, go to Insert > Module, paste the code, and press F5. This code also unhides “very hidden” sheets, and it covers chart sheets as well, because it uses Sheets instead of Worksheets.
Unhide a Very Hidden Sheet
A sheet can also be set as “very hidden” from VBA (xlSheetVeryHidden). Such a sheet doesn’t show up in the Unhide dialog box at all, so you need to unhide it from the Visual Basic Editor.
- First of all, press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor.
- After that, select the sheet in the Project Explorer and press F4 to open the Properties window.
- In the end, change the Visible property to “-1 – xlSheetVisible”.
You can also run the macro above, which unhides very hidden sheets along with the normal hidden ones.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the Unhide option greyed out?
There are two common reasons. The workbook has no hidden sheets (very hidden sheets don’t count), or the workbook structure is protected. To check the second one, go to Review > Protect Workbook, and enter the password if there is one to remove the protection.
That sheet is most likely very hidden. Use the Visual Basic Editor steps above, or the macro, to make it visible again.
Yes. Hiding a sheet only hides it from view. Formulas in other sheets and workbooks can still refer to its cells, so hiding a sheet isn’t a way to protect your data.
Written by
Puneet Gogia
Microsoft MVP — Excel · Founder, Excel Champs
Twelve years of teaching Excel, and a decade before that using it as a data analyst. Every tutorial here is written from a file I actually built.