Excel Sheet Tabs Not Showing? How to Get Them Back

The default setting in Excel is to show all the tabs (also called sheets) below the working area.

But if you can’t see any tabs and are wondering where they have disappeared, worry not. There are some possible reasons that may have been the cause of missing tabs in your Excel workbook.

In this article, I will show you a couple of methods you can use to restore the missing tabs in your Excel Workbook.

If you can’t see any of the tab names, it is most likely because of a setting that needs to be changed. If that setting is already on, the Excel window may be bigger than your screen, which pushes the tabs out of view.

And in case you can see some of the sheet tabs but not all the sheet tabs, one possible reason could be that the sheets have been hidden, and you need to unhide the sheets to make the sheet tabs visible.

Another less likely but possible reason could be that the scroll bar is hiding the sheet tabs (when there are more sheets that extend beyond where the scroll bar starts).

Let’s have a look at each of these scenarios.

Excel Sheet Tabs Not Showing at All? Turn On Show Sheet Tabs

Whenever you open an Excel workbook, it must have at least one sheet tab in it (even if it’s a new blank workbook).

If you can’t see any tab, this most likely means that you need to change a setting that will enable the visibility of the tabs.

Below are the steps to restore the visibility of the tabs in Excel:

1. Click the File tab

2. Click on Options

3. In the ‘Excel Options’ dialog box that opens, click on the Advanced option

4. Scroll down to the ‘Display options for this workbook’ section and check the ‘Show sheet tabs’ option

5. Click on OK

If you’re using Excel 2007, there is no File tab. Click the round Office button at the top left instead, then click Excel Options and Advanced, and follow steps 4 and 5 above.

The above change would ensure that all the available sheet tabs in the workbook become visible (unless the user has specifically hidden some of the worksheets).

Note that this setting is workbook specific, which means that in case you enable this setting in one of the workbooks, it would only make the tabs reappear in that specific workbook.

So if another file has the same problem, you’ll need to turn it on in that file too.

Tabs Still Missing? Resize the Excel Window

Sometimes the ‘Show sheet tabs’ option is already checked, and you still can’t see any tabs. In that case, the tabs are usually there, but they’re sitting below the edge of your screen.

This happens when the Excel window isn’t maximized and is taller than the screen, or when it’s tucked behind the Windows taskbar. It can also happen when your screen resolution is higher than that of the person who last saved the workbook.

Here are the steps to bring the tabs back into view:

1. If the Excel window isn’t maximized, double-click the title bar at the top of the window. This maximizes the window so it fits your screen.

If the tabs show up at the bottom now, you’re done.

If you have more than one workbook open, the windows can overlap, and one window can cover the tabs of another. In that case, continue with the next steps.

2. Click the View tab, and then click on Arrange All

3. In the Arrange Windows dialog box, select Tiled and click on OK

This arranges all the open workbook windows side by side, so none of them covers another’s tabs.

The scroll bar can also cover every tab if it has been stretched all the way to the left. If that’s what you see, use the fix in the scroll bar section below.

If you open a file and see only a blank gray area with no cells and no tabs, the whole workbook window has been hidden.

That’s a different fix (View > Unhide), and I’ve covered it in this guide on fixing Excel when it won’t open properly.

Some Sheet Tabs Missing? Unhide the Hidden Sheets

Sometimes, you may be able to see some of the tabs in the workbook, while some others may be missing.

The most likely reason that you cannot see some of the tabs in the workbook is that they have been hidden by the user.

When a worksheet is hidden in Excel, it continues to exist as a part of the Excel workbook, but you don’t see that sheet tab name along with other sheet tabs.

And this has a really simple solution. You need to unhide the sheets.

Below are the steps to unhide one or more sheets in Excel:

1. Right-click on any of the existing sheet tab names and click on the Unhide option

In case there are no hidden sheets in the workbook, the Unhide option will be grayed out.

Unhide can also be grayed out when the workbook’s structure is protected, even if it has hidden sheets. Check the Review tab, and if Protect Workbook is highlighted, click it to remove the protection (you’ll need the password if one was set).

Once the protection is off, go back to step 1, right-click a sheet tab and click on Unhide again.

2. In the Unhide dialog box, click on the sheet name you want to unhide

3. Click on OK

The above steps would unhide the selected sheet, and it would reappear as a tab in your workbook.

Pro Tip: In case you want to unhide multiple sheets, you can select them in one go in the ‘Unhide’ dialog box. To do this, hold the Control key (or Command key if using Mac) and then click on the sheet names that you want to unhide.

This would select all the sheets on which you click, and then you can unhide all these with one click.

If your version of Excel only lets you pick one sheet at a time in this dialog, here’s how to unhide all sheets in one go.

But what if you do not see the tab name in the names listed in the Unhide dialog box?

Well, there is a way in Excel to hide a sheet in such a way that its name doesn’t show up in the Unhide dialog box.

Then how do you unhide these ‘very hidden’ sheets?

You can read my tutorial here where I show you how to unhide those sheets that have been ‘very hidden’. It’s easy and it will only take a couple of clicks.

Sheet Tabs Hidden Behind the Scroll Bar

Another reason your tabs may be missing could be because of a large scroll bar that hides the tabs.

And it has a simple fix. Resize the scroll bar to make all other tabs visible.

Below I have a screenshot of an Excel workbook where I have 8 sheets but only three sheet tabs are visible. This is because of a large scroll bar that hides those tab names.

To get the sheet tabs to reappear, click on the three dots icon on the left of the scroll bar and drag it to the right. This will minimize the scroll bar, and all the sheet tabs that were earlier hidden would now become visible.

In case you have a large workbook with a lot of sheets, even if you minimize the scroll bar, some sheet tabs would still be hidden.

In such a case, you can use the navigation icons (which are at the left of the first sheet tab) to make those sheet tabs visible.

You can also right-click on these icons to open the Activate dialog box, which lists all the visible sheets so you can switch between sheets in one click.

So these are some of the ways you can use to fix the issue when the sheet tabs are missing and not showing in Excel.

If you don’t see any sheet tab in the workbook, it’s most likely because of the setting in the Excel Options dialog box that needs to be changed, a window that doesn’t fit your screen, or a scroll bar stretched over all the tabs.

And in case you see some sheet tab names but some are missing, then you need to check if some of the sheets have been hidden by the user or if they are hidden because of a large scroll bar.

Other Excel tutorials you may also like:

• Microsoft Excel Won’t Open? How to Fix It (9 Solutions)
• How to Switch Between Sheets in Excel?
• Count Sheets in Excel (using VBA)
• How to Get the Sheet Name in Excel? Easy Formula
• How to Insert New Worksheet in Excel (Easy Shortcuts)
• How to Delete Sheets in Excel (Shortcuts)
• Arrow Keys not Working in Excel (Not Moving Cells)
• How to Change the Color of the Sheet Tab in Excel
• How to Show or Hide the Ribbon in Excel? (with Shortcuts)
• How to Hide or Show Formula Bar in Excel?