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Hide columns in Excel for clean overviews

Software tips

Excel worksheets often contain many columns. When printing a summary, not all of these are necessary. Hide these columns to keep your printout clean and compact.

How to Hide Columns in Excel

  • Open the Excel worksheet
  • Select the column or columns you want to hide
  • Right-click on the column header
  • The column header is the bar above the cells where the column letters are displayed
  • Select Hide
  • The selected columns will now be hidden (in this example, columns J, K, and L)
  • You’ll notice the column letters are no longer shown in sequence
  • Now print the worksheet and you’ll have a clean summary without extra clutter

Why Not Delete Columns?

Deleting columns can be risky—especially if you are not the creator of the Excel worksheet. Deleting columns that are used in formulas can break those formulas and corrupt the data.

Unhide Hidden Columns

  • Hidden columns in Excel can be easily restored
  • Click the triangle in the top-left corner of the worksheet
  • This is the area to the left of column A and above row 1
  • You can also press the keyboard shortcut CTRL+A
  • Then right-click any column header
  • Select Unhide
  • The columns will now be visible again

TIP: Custom Views
If you regularly hide and unhide the same columns, you can save that layout using the Custom Views feature. This is especially useful when creating summaries for a manager. It allows you to quickly switch between showing all columns and a layout with certain columns hidden.

Step-by-step guide with screenshots at Easy Learning
On the Easy Learning website, this Microsoft Office tip is explained in more detail with clear screenshots. View this Office tip at >> Word tip: description
This tip applies to:
Microsoft Word 2007
Microsoft Excel 2007
Microsoft Outlook 2007
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