Microsoft Excel 2016 Tutorial - Hide Unhide Columns & Rows

In Microsoft Excel, if you don’t need
to see certain columns and rows for the time, or if you need to print your
worksheet but don’t want a few columns or rows in the printing, then you can
hide those columns and rows instead of deleting them. Hiding columns and rows
preserve the data within them, and the formulas used in those columns or rows,
will still be functional.

For instance, let’s see print preview
of this worksheet. As you can see that all the records are fitted properly on
page according to page length, but a few columns are getting extended to second
page. I don’t want a few columns to be printed. Like this “Province” column, I
don’t want to print this column, so what I do is, I select this column and then
click Format under Cell section of Home tab, then point to Hide and Unhide, and
then click Hide Columns. The another quick way to hide a column is to use
right-click context menu. For example, I don’t want this Discount column
either, so I right-click on column G, and then click Hide.

You can follow the same procedure to
hide specific rows in your worksheet. For example, I don’t need to see or print
this 5th record of customer name Carlos. So to hide this entire row, I can
either select the row first, then click Format, then Hide and Unhide, and
choose Hide Rows, or I can directly right-click on that particular row and
choose Hide from the context menu.

If you want to select and hide more
than one column or row in a time, then what you only need to do is to select
multiple columns and rows at once, then use the hide columns or rows command
respectively.

But what if, the columns or rows that
you want hide, are not in continuous order. To select non-continuous multiple
columns and rows, you can use the control key. For instance, if I need to hide
Order ID and Ship Date columns, what I do is, I select the column B first, then
press and hold the Control Key, and then click Ship Date column. The same
method goes with rows. Select the first row, then press and hold down the
Control key, then start selecting other non-continuous rows.

When you need to unhide a column, you
first need to select the left and right columns, alongside the hidden column.
Like, if I need to unhide the Column K, then I will first select the column J
and L, then right-click and choose Unhide.

In Excel 2016, there is a quick way to
unhide columns or rows as well. Even though you can identify the hidden columns
and rows by their column headings and row numbers, but when you hide a column
or row, you can also see a little gap between the columns and rows headings.
This gap indicates about the hidden columns or rows. So, if you double-click
the border, instantly the hidden columns or rows will be visible.

If anytime you feel that you need to
unhide all the columns or rows in your worksheet, then clicking the button on
upper left corner of your worksheet will select the entire worksheet. Then
right-click on any column heading, and then choose Unhide, and this will unhide
all the columns in this worksheet. You can do exactly the same to unhide all
the hidden rows as well. Select the entire worksheet, then right-click on one
of the rows heading, and choose Unhide.

So you can hide or unhide columns and
rows for both visual, and printing purposes.