Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 11, 2023)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
When you choose to hide worksheets in a workbook, Excel allows you to hide multiple sheets with one action: all you need to do is select the sheets before actually doing the hiding. Unhiding worksheets is a different story, however. Excel only allows you to unhide one at a time. If you have many worksheets you want to unhide, this can be very tedious.
The only way around this is to use a macro to unhide the worksheets. The following VBA macro will unhide all the worksheets in the current workbook:
Sub UnhideAllSheets() Dim wsSheet As Worksheet For Each wsSheet In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets wsSheet.Visible = xlSheetVisible Next wsSheet End Sub
If you would rather not unhide all the worksheets at once, you can cause the macro to ask about each hidden worksheet and then unhide each that you agree to unhide. The following macro will handle this task:
Sub UnhideSomeSheets() Dim sSheetName As String Dim sMessage As String Dim Msgres As VbMsgBoxResult For Each wsSheet In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets If wsSheet.Visible = xlSheetHidden Then sSheetName = wsSheet.Name sMessage = "Unhide the following sheet?" _ & vbNewLine & sSheetName Msgres = MsgBox(sMessage, vbYesNo) If Msgres = vbYes Then wsSheet.Visible = xlSheetVisible End If Next wsSheet End Sub
Note:
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2603) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Unhiding Multiple Worksheets.
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