Excel - Columns Missing but Don't Appear to be Hidden.

Copper Contributor

I am not able to see columns F and G. There is no double line showing as it would if the columns were hidden but I did try to unhide them with no success.

Can anyone suggest how to resolve this?

Thanks.

Nell

23 Replies

@Neilphi upload the file so that people can help. J

if the column is not Hidden then maybe column width is a very small number giving the appearance of being hidden.

@Rich99 , it's the same. When you hide the column the only what Excel does is set the width of such column to zero. Two vertical lines shall indicate such column, was it hide or manually set to zero width. Unhide shall work in both cases. However, sometimes doesn't.

 

I'd try to select columns from E to H and set column width to any reasonable one, e.g. 8 (Home->Format->Column Width)

@Rich99 , you are right, I didn't catch your idea. If column width is 0.1 it's practically invisible and at the same time not hidden.

@Sergei BaklanI tried selecting the columns around the missing ones and setting the column width to 15 and it didn't work.

This is a banking file and I was reluctant to go the "undo" route because I was afraid of losing data but I finally did try it and after several udos the columns reappeared.

I'd still like to know what happened in case it happens again.

Thanks for everyone's input.

 

@Neilphi , it's hard to say what it was exactly without sample file. As a comment, if you are not sure in operations better to do the copy of your file and test on it.

 

Anyway, glad to know you resolved the issue.

hi Neilphi,

The same happened to me just now. I resolved the issue however by unfreezing panes (that is if you have freezed your panes) Freezed panes shows 2-3 columns before the freeze so it automatically hides the columns before it.

i have experienced this issue before .

 

unhidden Columns but still disappeared !

 

This is due to Freeze option :

 

in order to solve the issue : first unfreeze the sheet.

 

waiting for your reply.

thank you very much .. worked with me

@Sergei Baklan 
This worked for me.
I needed to select the column using arrow keys or name field.
The columns width was set to ("") which gave it no size even after hiding/unhiding.
Changing the size to 30 units after following your instruction resolved the issue for me.

Thanks,

@Jacob_Porter 

Great to know that helped you, thanks for sharing.

I had a similar issue where I could not see columns A & B. The unhide, ungroup, column formatting and width adjustments did not appear to work for me.

 

I fixed the error by unfreezing columns and rows in the view tab. This brought the columns back to view and I could access all data and expected functionality. When freezing columns and rows again, the error did not continue.

 

Good luck! :)

@amymac90 I have the same issue right now, that's how I found this page. I was missing E and F. so after a while of trying to hide/unhide and other things, I used the drag bar at the bottom to go to the end of the chart at the right to see if the columns were somehow moved to the end (after column AD). They were not there, but when it dragged it all the way back to column A, E&F were there. It just so happens that someone FROZE columns A,B,C, and D, so when you drag the table those stay on the left side. And whoever used the document last left E & F hidden behind A,B,C,D. 

@Lizzie259 

Thanks for the info. I resolved  my problem some time ago but I don't remember how so I will keep this information for the next time.

Thanks again.

 

Unfreezing worked for me - thanks for the tip! @Dee_0522 

I also have same problem
Try to unhide or select all set column width but not work.
At the end i select all copy and paste at the new sheet or new excel file it work. Hope this can help.

@Emad_Abdelmonem 

this worked like magic. :)

@queseamao- I tried that a little while ago and it worked. Now the problem has gone away. (I hope I didn't just jinx myself.)

Thank-you,