How do I hide the contents of a cell in Google Sheets?

When you type text in a cell, Google Sheets automatically hides anything that extends beyond the size of the cell. If you don’t want to double-click a cell to see its contents, here’s how to use the wrap text feature.

By default, whenever a cell contains more characters than physical appearance, instead of spilling over onto the next line, extra characters are hidden from sight. To show all the text contained in a single cell, we’ll use the wrap text feature to format and see the entirety of the cell.

Fire up your browser, head to the Google Sheets home page, and open a new or existing spreadsheet.

Click on an empty cell and then type text. Make sure to enter enough characters for Google Sheets to automatically hide the excess.

If you open a spreadsheet that already contains data, you can select the cell(s) where you want to apply text wrap format.

Next, click Format > Text Wrapping and then click on the “Wrap” option to format the cell.

Afterward, the cells you selected to format no longer hide the remaining characters inside the cell. Now, the characters wrap to a new line within the containing cell.

That’s all there is to it. Whenever you need to show all the data inside a cell in an instant, you can use the wrap text formatting feature to accomplish it easily.

When you enter text that’s longer than the cell’s width, Excel automatically overflows the text to the next columns to display it. One way to fix this is to wrap the text so it displays on multiple lines but below, but here we’ll show how to hide the overflow text while keeping the cell at standard height.

Hide Overflow Text in a Cell

Without wrapping the text and increasing the cell height, you can prevent text displaying beyond the right cell border. In the below example, the text from cell B2 is displayed over cells C2 and D2.

To avoid this and cut off the text outside of cell B2’s borders, follow these steps:

1. Select the text cell and in the Ribbon, go to Home > Alignment Settings.

1. The Format Cells window pops up. In the Alignment tab, choose Fill for Horizontal text alignment, and click OK.

As a result, the text in cell B2 is cut off to fit the cell height and is no longer overflowed to the other cells.

Hide Overflow Text in Google Sheets

To achieve the same in Google Sheets, select the text cell and in the Toolbar, choose Text wrapping, and click Clip.

If you don’t want people to change the content in a spreadsheet, you can protect it. This shouldn’t be used as a security measure. People can print, copy, paste, and import and export copies of a protected spreadsheet. Only share spreadsheets with people you trust.

Tip: If "Protected sheets and ranges" isn't visible, you're likely in Microsoft Office editing. To use sheets and ranges protection, convert your file to Google Sheets. Learn about Microsoft Office editing and how to convert Microsoft Office files.

Protect a range or sheet

Important: When you protect a sheet, you can’t:

• Simultaneously lock the formatting of cells and allow users to edit input values
• Protect data with a password

1. Open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
2. Click Data
   
   Protected sheets and ranges. A box will open on the right.
3. Click Add a sheet or range or click an existing protection to edit it.
4. To protect a range, click Range. To protect a sheet, click Sheet.
   • Range: To change or enter the range you’re protecting, click the spreadsheet icon and highlight the range in the spreadsheet.
   • Sheet: Choose a sheet to protect. If you want a set of cells to be unprotected in a sheet, check the box next to "Except certain cells."
5. Click Set permissions or Change permissions.
6. Choose how you want to limit editing:
   • To show a warning when anyone makes an edit: Select "Show a warning when editing this range." It doesn’t block people from editing, but they’ll see a message asking them to confirm if they really want to make an edit.
   • To choose who can edit the range or sheet: select "Restrict who can edit this range." Choose:
     • Only you: Only you (and the owner if you’re not the owner) can edit the range or sheet.
     • Only domain: If you use Google Sheets for work or school, only people in your domain can edit the range or sheet. This option is only available when everyone in your domain can edit the spreadsheet.
     • Custom: Only the people you choose can edit the range or sheet.
     • Copy permissions from another range: Reuse the same permissions you set up on a different set of cells or sheet.
7. Click Save or Done.

To see protected cells, click View

Who can protect a range or sheet

• If you own a spreadsheet: You can decide who can change ranges and sheets.
• If you can edit a spreadsheet: You can decide who can edit ranges and sheets but can’t take permissions away from owners.
• If you can view or comment on a spreadsheet: You won't be able to make any changes.

Edit a copy of a protected sheet

• If you can edit: You can make a copy of the protected sheet, copy the workbook, or upload a new version.
• If you have can view but not edit: You can make a copy of the spreadsheet.

Remove protection

1. In a Google Sheet, click Data
   
    Protect Sheets and ranges.
2. On the right panel that appears, to view all of the ranges with protections, click Cancel.
3. Find protection you want to delete
   
    Click delete
   
   .

Hide sheets from view

You can hide sheets that are old or are placeholders for calculations used by other sheets.

Hiding a sheet is not the same as protecting a sheet.

• All spreadsheet editors can unhide and view these sheets.
• Spreadsheet viewers can’t see hidden sheets. If someone makes a copy of the spreadsheet, the sheets will stay hidden, but they’ll be able to unhide the sheets.

Hide or unhide a sheet

To hide a sheet:

1. Open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
2. Click the sheet you want to hide.
3. On the sheet tab, click the Down arrow
   
   .
4. Click Hide sheet. This option won’t show if your spreadsheet doesn’t contain two or more sheets.

To unhide a sheet:

1. Click View
   
   Hidden sheets. If your spreadsheet doesn’t have any hidden sheets, this option will be grayed out.
2. Click the sheet that you no longer want hidden.
3. The spreadsheet will reappear.

Import and export spreadsheets with hidden sheets

Hidden sheets will stay hidden if you:

• Export the spreadsheet as a .pdf, .xls, or .ods file.
• Import the spreadsheet in .xls, .xlsx, or .ods format.
• Exporting the spreadsheet to html with the "/htmlview" parameter: If you include the page parameter (#gid=N) in the URL, the hidden sheet will show.
• Publish the spreadsheet.

Edit sheets

Tip: You can perform bulk actions on multiple tabs in a Sheet, such as:

• Copy
• Delete
• Duplicate
• Hide
• Move tabs

For bulk actions, on your keyboard press Shift, select the tabs

Copy a sheet

You can copy a sheet in a spreadsheet. Copies can be made within the same spreadsheet or into a separate spreadsheet.

To copy a sheet to another spreadsheet:

1. On the sheet tab, click the Down arrow
   
   .
2. Click Copy to.
3. Choose the destination spreadsheet from the list.
4. Click Select.

To copy a sheet within a spreadsheet:

1. On the sheet tab, click the Down arrow
   
   .
2. Click Duplicate.
3. A duplicate sheet will appear in a new tab next to the original sheet.

Reorder sheets

To change the order of the sheets in a spreadsheet, click and drag a sheet tab until it is in the order you want.

Rename a sheet

To change the name of a sheet in a spreadsheet, double-click the text on the sheet tab and type in the new name.

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