Written by Ivana Google Workplace / Sheets
To unhide rows in Google Sheets:
Google Sheets has a handy feature that allows you to hide rows that you don’t want to show. This allows you to focus on the data you want. However, the hidden rows are not lost - they are still in the background. Luckily, you can unhide rows in Google Sheet with the built-in feature.
This guide presents you with everything you need to know about how to unhide a row in Google Sheets.
As convenient as the feature for hiding rows in Google Sheets is to allow you to concentrate on the important columns, people tend to forget to unhide the rows they have hidden, and what’s worse, they forget which rows they have hidden. This is especially the case if you are working on a big Sheet with hundreds or thousands of rows and large data sets.
The situation is more complicated when you collaborate with someone on the Google Sheet and they have hidden some rows for their convenience, so you don’t know how the rows were hidden.
Fortunately, there is a solution for every case. This is how to unhide hidden rows in Google Sheets
If you are working in a Google Sheets file with a smaller data set, it’s straightforward to tell if there are hidden rows and even easier to unhide rows.
First, you’ll notice that certain consecutive row numbers are missing. Secondly, you’ll notice two upward and downward-facing arrows on the consecutive rows, indicating hidden rows in between them.
To unhide the rows, just click on one of the two arrows and the hidden rows should now become visible again.
The previous method works well if you can clearly see which rows are hidden. However, if you are working with a larger data set, it may be difficult to tell which rows are hidden.
In this case, this is how to unhide all hidden rows in Google Sheets:
If there are multiple hidden groups of rows in Google Sheets, this is how to unhide them:
Often you may not see rows because there is a filter applied in the sheet. In this case, you can see that there are hidden rows, but can’t unhide them with the previous method.
This is how to tell if a filter is hiding the rows and to unhide the rows:
To unhide the rows hidden by a filter, click on the ‘Turn off filter’ option. This will remove any filters and the hidden rows will appear.
Bonus reading: How to Use Google Sheets Special Characters
Another reason why rows may be hidden is that a filter view has been created. This is how to see if a sheet is in the filter view.
To unhide the rows, you need to disable the filter view:
This will disable the filter view and bring back the original spreadsheet view, which will also show the previously hidden rows.
You might be also interested in learning how to color every other row in Google Sheets.