How to Delete Sheets in Excel

The ability to add new worksheets to a workbook in Microsoft Excel makes it easy for you to organize the data into your spreadsheet in a logical manner.

But you might discover that you have created too many tabs and that you need to get rid of some of them.

The steps in this article are going to show you how to delete an Excel worksheet from a workbook in Microsoft Excel for Office 365.

We will go over the process briefly at the start of the article, and then we will continue below with additional information and pictures for the steps.

How to Delete a Sheet in Excel

1. Open the Excel workbook file.
2. Locate the worksheet tab at the bottom of the window.
3. Right-click the tab, then choose the Delete option.
4. Click the Delete button to confirm the permanent deletion of the worksheet.

Our guide continues below with additional information about how to delete sheets in Excel, including pictures of these steps.

Related: Our what is the Excel new sheet shortcut article can show you a couple of different ways to add a new worksheet to your file.

When you first start working with Microsoft Excel, some of the terminologies can be a little confusing.

Perhaps one of the biggest sources of this confusion comes with the difference between worksheets and workbooks.

A workbook is the actual Excel file, while worksheets are contained within the workbook. You can add or delete worksheets as needed.

Microsoft Excel provides you with a number of different options concerning the worksheets contained within your workbook file.

Most of these options are located at the bottom of the window, below the cells of the currently-active worksheet.

There’s a + button that you can click to create a new worksheet, but you may notice that there isn’t a – button or anything else obvious that would serve as a “delete sheet” option.

Luckily you can delete sheets from Microsoft Excel by following our guide below.

Our how to remove page 1 watermark in Excel article will show you how to get rid of unwanted watermarks on your spreadsheets.

How to Delete a Worksheet from a Workbook in Microsoft Excel for Office 365 (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in this article were performed in the Excel for Office 365 version of the application. However, these steps will also work for most of the other earlier versions of Excel found in earlier versions of Microsoft Office as well.

Step 1: Open your Microsoft Excel workbook containing the worksheet that you would like to delete.

Step 2: Find the worksheet tabs at the bottom of the window, below your cells.

Step 3: Right-click the sheet to delete, then choose the Delete option.

Step 4: Click the Delete button to permanently delete the worksheet and the data contained within it.

Now that you know how to delete sheets in Excel, you will be able to remove existing sheets that are either no longer necessary, or that don’t contain any information.

Alternatively, you can delete a sheet from Excel by selecting the sheet tab to delete, clicking the Home tab at the top of the window, then clicking the Delete button in the Cells section of the ribbon and choosing the Delete Sheet option.

Note that there are several other options available on that right-click menu, including an Insert option. You can use this as an alternative Insert Sheet method, or you can use it to insert a worksheet template. There is also a Rename option on that menu that you can use to give your sheets better names that the default Sheet1, Sheet2, etc. options that Microsoft gives to new worksheets by default.

If you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, then there is one that you can use to delete Excel sheets. Simply select the sheets you want to delete, press Alt + E on your keyboard, then press the L key. You can then press Enter on your keyboard to confirm the deletion, or you can click the Delete button in the dialog box that pops up at the center of the window.

Find out how to repeat a row at the top of every printed page in Excel if you are having trouble identifying cells when you print out multiple-page worksheets in Excel.