Whether you’re just trying to clean up a long-used Excel document of no-longer-necessary sheets, or you’ve added sheets by accident, we’ll help you learn how to delete a sheet in Excel on both the desktop and mobile versions of the Microsoft Excel app, so that you’ll have no problem doing so in future.
For any additional information or any unanswered queries, please see our FAQs at the end of this article.
Table of Contents
How to delete a single sheet in Microsoft Excel for the PC
- Open up the Excel app on your PC, and load a document (either an existing one, or a blank one to test – if blank, add a couple sheets by clicking the (+) icon next to ‘Sheet 1’ at the bottom of your page)
- Next, locate the sheet you wish to delete
- Right-click on the sheet’s name along that bottom taskbar
- From the pop-up menu, select ‘Delete’
- If you have information/data already entered into your undesired sheet, a dialogue box will appear telling you that your sheet will be permanently deleted. (If no data has been entered into the unwanted sheet, it will simply be automatically deleted).
- If you are sure that you want to delete this sheet, go ahead and confirm the deletion by clicking ‘Delete’ one last time.
- You have successfully, and permanently deleted a single sheet
How to delete multiple sheets in Microsoft Excel for the PC
- Open up the Excel app on your PC, and load a document (either an existing one, or a blank one to test – if blank, add a couple sheets by clicking the (+) icon next to ‘Sheet 1’ at the bottom of your page)
- Next, locate the sheets you wish to delete
- Hold CTRL on your keyboard, and click individually on each sheet you wish to delete
- Next, right-click on any one of these sheet’s names, along that bottom taskbar
- From the pop-up menu, select ‘Delete’
- If you have information/data already entered into your undesired sheets, a dialogue box will appear telling you that your sheets will be permanently deleted. (If no data has been entered into the unwanted sheets, they will simply be automatically deleted).
- If you are sure that you want to delete these sheets, go ahead and confirm the deletion by clicking ‘Delete’ one last time.
- You have successfully, and permanently deleted multiple Excel sheets
How to delete a single sheet in the Microsoft Excel mobile app
- Open up the Excel app on your mobile or tablet device, and load a document (either an existing one, or a blank one to test – if blank, add a couple sheets by clicking the (+) icon next to ‘Sheet 1’ at the bottom of your page)
- Next, locate the sheet you wish to delete
- Tap and hold on the sheet’s name along that bottom taskbar
- From the pop-up menu, scroll right until you locate ‘Delete’, and tap on it
- If you have information/data already entered into your undesired sheet, a dialogue box will appear telling you that your sheet will be permanently deleted. (If no data has been entered into the unwanted sheet, it will simply be automatically deleted).
- If you are sure that you want to delete this sheet, go ahead and confirm the deletion by tapping ‘Delete’ one last time.
- You have successfully, and permanently deleted a single sheet
Note: there is no way to quickly delete multiple sheets in the mobile app, you’ll just have to repeat the above process for each and every sheet which you need to delete.
And there you have it! As quick and simple as that, you can learn how to delete single or multiple sheets, in either the desktop or mobile Microsoft Excel app.
For any additional information or unanswered queries, please see our FAQs below.
Frequently asked questions
What is Excel?
Excel – part of Microsoft’s Office package, or bought singularly – is a spreadsheet creation and manipulation data entry software, and one of the most popular in its field. Users can create and edit as many spreadsheets as they need, collaborating with other users as and when necessary to input and work with, manipulate and alter data in order to carry out myriad tasks.
Microsoft Excel is perhaps most popular in the fields of accountancy, data analysis, and auditing, as it is especially good at working with numbers to create charts or to keep automatically updating tabs on various inputs and outputs, which allow the user to quickly and efficiently make calculations according to their needs.
What is a sheet in Excel?
When one creates a new Excel spreadsheet document, they are automatically faced with a single sheet. However, most Excel users will – sooner or later – realise that they need more than just one sheet per document.
For example, you may be keeping a personal or professional accountancy record, and want a separate sheet – in the same document – per month.
At the bottom of the page in the Excel app/in an Excel document, you’ll find a row of tabs – each one corresponding to a new spreadsheet, and likely named thusly: ‘Sheet 1’, ‘Sheet 2’, and so on. You can of course rename these sheets to correspond to the data they hold, as and when you like.
Why would I want to delete a sheet in Excel?
There are a number of reasons you might wish to delete a sheet in Excel. Perhaps you’re needing to send on your spreadsheet document to a colleague or someone outside your business, and don’t want them to have full access to the original document, thus you want to create a new document with only some of the sheets.
Perhaps you have erroneously added a sheet or two, or, just maybe, you simply no longer need those extra sheets. Whatever your reasoning, we’ve created the above tutorials specifically to teach you how to delete a sheet in Excel.
Can I recover an accidentally deleted sheet in Excel?
Not readily, no. When you go to delete a sheet that has information in it, a dialogue box will pop up stating that Microsoft will permanently delete the sheet, and asking if you’re sure you wish to proceed. If the answer is still yes, then you can go ahead and confirm the deletion.
Just be aware that the process is irreversible, and no amount of pressing the ‘Undo’ button will bring it back. The only way to reverse an accidentally deleted sheet in Excel is by restoring an older version of the file – one you saved before you deleted the sheet. As such, we would always recommend that you save your progress regularly so that you can load up an old version if and when an accidental deletion does occur.
Beware that having the ‘Autosave’ feature turned on in your Excel document means that once you make any change, including a deletion, Microsoft will automatically overwrite the previous save. Take this into consideration, too.
