How to hide a tab in Google Sheets

Hiding a tab takes two clicks and is useful, for tidiness. It is not a way to keep anything from anyone, and Google says so themselves. Here's how to do it, how to undo it, and what to use instead when the goal is privacy rather than tidiness.

How to hide a tab

1. Right-click the tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet.
2. Choose Hide sheet.

The option is greyed out if it's the only visible tab, since a spreadsheet has to show at least one. You can also hide from the tab's own dropdown arrow, and on Android from the tab's context menu; the iOS app doesn't offer hiding, though it respects tabs hidden elsewhere.

In Apps Script the same thing is sheet.hideSheet(), with sheet.showSheet() to reverse it.

How to unhide

1. Open View → Show → Hidden sheets.
2. Click the sheet you want back.

If the Hidden sheets entry is greyed out, there aren't any. The same list is reachable from the All sheets button (the four-lines icon at the bottom-left), which shows every tab including hidden ones, and is faster when you have a lot of them.

Why hiding is not privacy

The interface is misleading here, so this part matters. A hidden tab disappears from view, which feels like it's gone. It isn't. The tab was sent to everyone's browser along with the rest of the file, and merely isn't being drawn.

Google's own documentation is unambiguous: hiding a sheet is not the same as protecting a sheet, all editors can unhide sheets for convenience, and viewers can still access content in hidden sheets, for instance by making a copy of the spreadsheet, where they can unhide them freely.

Only the last of those needs any skill. The rest are menu items.

"What if I protect it as well?"

A reasonable thought, and it doesn't help. Protection (Data → Protect sheets and ranges) controls who may edit a range. It says nothing about who may read one. A protected, hidden sheet is still fully readable by everyone with access to the file. They simply can't change it.

Hiding manages attention. Protection manages edits. Neither manages access, because access is granted at the file level by Drive, and a Google Sheets file is indivisible as far as permissions are concerned.

What hiding is actually good for

It's a real feature with real uses, all of them about attention rather than secrecy:

• Helper tabs. Lookup tables, parameter lists, and intermediate calculations that would only confuse someone reading the dashboard.
• Archive tabs. Last year's data, kept for formulas to reference but out of the way.
• Draft tabs. Work in progress you don't want colleagues reacting to yet, as a courtesy signal rather than a lock.
• Reducing tab clutter in a workbook that has grown to thirty of them.

Rule of thumb: hide anything you wouldn't mind a colleague finding, and nothing else.

What to do instead when it's actually private

If the tab holds salaries, margins, another client's numbers, or anything you'd have to explain later, the data needs to be in a file that person cannot open. Three ways to get there:

1. Move the sensitive tab out. Right-click it, choose Copy to → New spreadsheet, delete the original tab, and reference it with IMPORTRANGE if your formulas need it. Now the confidential data lives in a file with its own short access list.
2. Share only what they need, read-only. Build a separate spreadsheet that pulls in just their rows with IMPORTRANGE, and share that file instead of the master.
3. Share one tab, editable and synced. When they need to work in it rather than read it, give them that tab as its own spreadsheet with Share Single Sheet, and let edits flow both ways while the rest of your workbook stays out of reach.

Frequently asked questions