Using Hidden Sheets In Microsoft Excel
A Microsoft Excel workbook is actually a container a bit like a folder. Each Excel workbook can contain one or more worksheets & it the worksheet that is the actual container of information. Worksheets are identified by a tab which bears the name of the sheet. Clicking a tab activates that particular sheet.
In exactly the same way that Microsoft Excel allows you to hide columns it also possible to hide entire worksheets. Hiding a worksheet is particularly useful where you have a workbook that contains a lot of sheets. Naturally hidden worksheets can be made visible again by using the Unhide command. It is possible to hide either an individual sheet or to hide a group of sheets. However sheets can only be unhidden one sheet at a time.
To hide a single sheet simply right-click on the sheet tab & choose Hide. The corresponding worksheet will then disappear. There is also a ribbon command which will do the same thing. First highlight the sheet by clicking on its tab & then in the Cell section of the Home Tab of Excel Ribbon choose Format-Visibility-Hide & Unhide-Hide.
To hide more than one sheet simply highlight the sheets by clicking on the first holding down the Control key & clicking on each of the others. Next right-click on one of the highlighted sheet tabs & choose Hide.
To make a hidden worksheet visible again you can right-click on any sheet tab & choose Unhide. The Unhide dialog then appears. Unfortunately itn’t possible to select more than one sheet to unhide; if you try Control-click or Shift-click you’ll see that only one sheet can be highlighted. Highlight the name of the sheet that you want to make visible & click OK.
You can also use the ribbon command Format-Visibility-Hide & Unhide-UnHide Sheet. When the Unhide dialog appears highlight the sheet you want to unhide & click OK. You’ll notice that when sheets are unhidden they return to the positions that they originally occupied.
As well as hiding sheets it also possible to make a worksheet very hidden. A very hidden worksheet is not shown in the Unhide dialog & therefore cannot be unhidden in the normal way. To make a worksheet very hidden open the Visual Basic Editor by going to the Developer tab of the ribbon & clicking on Visual Basic button. Next if they are not already visible choose Project Explorer & Properties Window form View menu. Select the sheet that you want to make very hidden in the Project Explorer. Finally in the Properties Window change the value of the Visible setting to 2-xlSheetVeryHidden.
The author is trainer & developer with an independent computer training company offering Excel 2007 Training Courses in London & throughout the UK.
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