Turning Off Worksheet Tabs

Summary: Worksheet tabs are a great way to jump from sheet to sheet in a workbook. You may, however, want to turn them off (hide them) so that they cannot be seen by users. This tip explains how. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003.)

At the bottom of the Excel window you typically see tabs that represent each of the worksheets in your workbook. Click on a tab and the contents of the worksheet are displayed. Excel allows you to control whether these tabs are displayed or not; simply follow these steps:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. Excel displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the View tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
Clear the Sheet Tabs check box to turn off the worksheet tabs.
Click on OK.

Why would you want to turn off the worksheet tabs? The two typical answers are to provide more vertical space in which to display the content of the workbook and to make the Excel interface more similar to other spreadsheet programs that don't use tabs.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2808) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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