Unhiding a Specific Column in Excel

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Let’s say you have three consecutive columns hidden C, D and E. You only want to unhide the middle column – column D – and leave the other two columns C and E hidden. Maybe they contain confidential information.

In the image below columns C, D and E are hidden.

We want to unhide column D but NOT columns C and E. Here are the steps.

Click in the Name Box and type D1 and press Enter. This selects cell D1 even though it is hidden.

You can see the entry in cell D1 in the Formula Bar. This is useful if you want to check you have selected the correct column- see image above.

On the Home ribbon click the Format icon drop down. Choose Hide & Unhide and then Unhide Columns – image below.

You can also try the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + ) that doesn’t work on my computer.

The other keyboard shortcut combination to unhide the column is Alt H O U L pressed in sequence, not held down. This should work.