How to Hide and Unhide Rows or Columns in Google Sheets

Sometimes, you don’t want to show some sensitive or irrelevant data on your worksheet. For example, if you share or publish a worksheet and you don’t show some row(s) or column(s) of data, you can hide them in Google Sheets.

When you hide a column or row, it is not removed, it is just simply hidden from the view. In Google Sheets, it very easy to hide and unhide rows or columns. In this post, we’re going to learn how to hide and unhide rows/columns in Google Sheets.

Hide a Single Row or Column in Google Sheets

Suppose you have a large dataset, hiding some unnecessary rows or columns can help you focus on the important data. This way you don’t have to move or delete data, you can just unhide them when they are needed again.

Let us show to hide and unhide rows or columns in Google Sheets with this sample sheet.

To hide a single row, open the spreadsheet and select the row that you want to hide by clicking on the row number.

When you select a row, all the cells in that row will be highlighted.

Then, right-click on anywhere on the selected row and select ‘Hide row’ on the context menu as shown below.

Now the row (3) is hidden, but you can see arrows in the rows above and below to signify that there is a hidden row in between.

To hide a column, click on the column letter at the top of the spreadsheet to highlight the column. Then, right-click on the selected column and choose ‘Hide column’.

The column B is hidden:

Hide Multiple Rows or Columns in Google Sheets

You can also select and hide multiple rows in a worksheet. To select non-continuous rows, hold the Ctrl key and click on the row numbers on the left. Here, we selected rows 3,5, and 6.

Then, right-click on anywhere on the selected rows and select ‘Hide row’ as we did before.

To select multiple contiguous/adjacent rows, click on the first row and drag across the rows you want to hide, or click on the first row and hold the Shift key and click on the last row numbers you want to hide. Now row 2:9 is selected.

Once the row are selected, right-click on the selected rows and select ‘Hide row’.

To hide multiple columns, select the columns you want to hide the same you selected rows above and click ‘Hide columns’.

Now the selected columns are hidden (A, B, and E).

Unhide a Single Row or Column in Google Sheets

If you need to view the hidden information again, you can quickly unhide them with one or few clicks.

You can find the hidden row or column by looking for the arrow icons (caret icons) on the border between the adjacent row or column headers. You can also find the hidden row or column by looking for the missing consecutive row numbers or column letters.

Here, you can see there is a hidden column (D) and a hidden row (3) in the below spreadsheet.

When you hover your cursor over one of them, the arrow bar will appear. All you have to do is click one of the arrows and your hidden row or column will become visible again.

You hidden column or row will appear selected.

Follow the same procedure to unhide a row.

Unhide Multiple Rows or Columns in Google Sheets

The previous method is great if you have a few hidden rows/columns or few groups of rows/columns and if you can find which rows or columns are hidden.

Suppose you received a large spreadsheet from a co-worker which has many hidden data on the sheet. In such cases, you can unhide all hidden rows or columns at once.

First, you need to select the desired range of row numbers or column letters with hidden rows/columns.

To select multiple hidden rows, click on the row number above the first hidden row or group. Then, press and hold the Shift key and select the row number below the last hidden row or group.

Right-click anywhere where within the selected range and select ‘Unhide rows’.

As you can see all the hidden rows are now visible.

You can also unhide multiple columns using the same method.

To select multiple columns, click on the column letter before the first hidden column. Then, press and hold the Shift key and select the column letter after the last hidden column or range.