How to delete a Sheet in Excel

MS Excel is one of the most powerful spreadsheet programs that can handle large amounts of data efficiently. Excel allows us to store data in multiple sheets within a single workbook or spreadsheet. When we create a new Excel document, we usually get three blank sheets by default. Sometimes, we may not need all the sheets. In this case, we have to delete the unwanted sheet from our workbook. Therefore, we must know the process of deleting a sheet in Excel documents.

This article discusses the essential ways to delete/ remove an undesired sheet or worksheet from our Excel workbooks. Using these ways, we can arrange our data more precisely and speed up a performance a bit. The article also discusses the steps of deleting multiple undesired sheets at once.

Deleting a Sheet/ Worksheet in Excel

Excel offers different ways of deleting a sheet from the spreadsheet. We can use any of the following methods to delete or remove a sheet in Excel:

• By using Right-click Option
• By Format Option on Ribbon
• By using the Keyboard Shortcut

Note: It should be noted that sheets cannot be recovered after they are deleted. Therefore, we should always keep a copy of the original file to recover our data in case of any uncertainty or unwanted action.

Let us discuss each method in detail:

Deleting a Sheet by using Right-click Option

Another quick method of deleting a sheet from the Excel workbook includes the use of right-click options. Therefore, if we don’t want a sheet and need to delete it from the workbook, we can follow the below steps:

• First, we need to open a workbook in which we want to delete a sheet. Next, we must locate the Sheet tab from the bottom of the workbook.
  
• We need to select a workbook to delete and right-click on it. Once we click the right-click, Excel displays some options related to a particular sheet.
  
  Here, we must click the option “Delete’.
  
  Upon selecting a Delete option, Excel displays a warning message asking whether we want to delete a sheet or cancel the action.
  
  We must click on the button ‘Delete’ from the warning dialogue box, and the selected sheet will be instantly deleted from the current workbook.
  

That is how we can delete a sheet by using the right-click option in Excel.

Deleting a Sheet by Format Option on Ribbon

Deleting a sheet using the ribbon tool is one of the easiest methods. We need to follow the below steps to delete a sheet using the Format option:

• First, we need to open a specific sheet that we need to delete. We can select the particular sheet from the sheet tab on the bottom of the Excel window.
  
• After selecting a sheet, we need to navigate the Home tab and click the drop-down icon below the ‘Delete’ tile under the group ‘Cells’.
  
  After that, we must select the option ‘Delete Sheet’ from the bottom of the drop-down list.
  
  If Excel displays a warning box asking whether to delete a sheet, we must click on the ‘Delete’ button to continue deleting a sheet.
  
• After clicking the Delete button in a warning dialogue box, the selected sheet will be deleted from the workbook sheet tab.
  

That is how we can delete a sheet by using the Format option in Excel.

Deleting a Sheet by using the Keyboard Shortcut

Although Excel does not offer a direct keyboard shortcut key for deleting a sheet similar to the ‘Ctrl + C’ to copy, we can use the Alt sequence method. This means that we can press the Alt key followed by some specific keys to access a desired option from the ribbon instantly. There are usually two different keyboard shortcuts that help in deleting a sheet from the active workbook:

• General Alt Sequence: According to the general Alt sequencing method, we need to press the Alt key followed by the keys H, D, and S. We don’t; need to use a mouse to delete an active sheet. This shortcut usually goes through the ribbon and accesses Home > Delete > Sheet on the ribbon.
  
• Legacy Alt Sequence: As per the legacy Alt sequencing method, we must press the Alt key followed by the keys E and L. As the name suggests, this particular shortcut key works by navigating to the ribbon designed in the older version of Excel, i.e., Excel 2003. But, later versions have a completely different ribbon menu. However, Excel preserved this shortcut and provided it in all later versions of Excel. We will not see any hotkeys appearing on the screen when using this shortcut in Excel 2007 or later; however, the shortcut still works properly.
  

When deleting a sheet in the Excel workbook, we only need to select a specific sheet and use any of the above keyboard shortcuts. The selected sheet will be deleted immediately. That is how we can delete a sheet by using the keyboard shortcut in Excel.

How to delete multiple sheets in Excel?

Although we can delete multiple sheets in the same way we discussed above, we will have to repeat the entire process for each sheet. It will be a bit lengthy process when we have more than three sheets to delete. Hence, Excel also provides us with a way to delete multiple sheets at once.

Two different scenarios can happen when deleting multiple sheets. At first, we may only need to delete the adjacent sheet. Second, we may only need to delete non-adjacent sheets. The process is the same as above; however, we should select the sheets accordingly.

• For Adjacent Sheets: To select adjacent sheets, we need to press and hold the Shift key and then click on the first and the last desired sheets to be deleted. All the sheets in between the range will also be selected accordingly. However, we can also use the Ctrl key. But, we will have to click on all the sheets repeatedly.
  
• For Non-Adjacent Sheets: To select only non-adjacent sheets, we cannot use the Shift key. For this, we must use the Ctrl key. We need to press and hold the Ctrl key and then click on all the desired sheets one by one. This way, all the desired non-adjacent sheets will be selected.
  

Let us now understand the process of deleting multiple sheets with an example:

• Suppose we have the following Excel workbook and we want to delete the Sheet2 and Sheet3 at once:
  
  First, we must select all the sheets that we want to delete from our workbook. To select Sheet2 and Sheet3, we need to press and hold the Ctrl key and click on both sheets one by one using the mouse button. We can click and select the desired sheets from the sheet tab from the bottom of the Excel window.
  
• After the sheets have been selected, we can use any of the methods discussed above. Here, we use the right-click method. This means that we right-click on a sheet tab with selected sheets and click the ‘Delete’ option from the right-click menu options.
  
• As soon as we click the Delete button, all the selected sheets will be deleted instantly.
  

That is how we can delete multiple sheets or worksheets in Excel.