Hi all,

I have an excel sheet and I want excel to display only columns A to I, other area can be grey out.



Does anyone know how to do that in excel?

Thanks!

Select col J by clicking on the column header
Press Shift+Ctrl+Right arrow
Right click in the selected zone
Click Hide

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Officeboy, Peco's solution hides those cells. (They're not gone, they just have their display width reduced to 0; you can get any of them back by reversing that.) That may be the way you like best to accomplish it.

But you did say "grey out". If you meant it literally, the only way I've found to do it (and it's a technique I used to use often) is to grey out the entire worksheet, then ungrey the columns at the left that I'm actually using. This allows me to see the helping columns at the right while providing a strong visual cue to my eyes which columns are which.

To grey out a whole sheet, select the entire range (hit <Shift-Space>,<Ctrl-Space> or click the button in the upper left corner), then use the Format Cells dialog with "Fill" colors. Pick the shade of grey you want. Then, as I said, change the "usual" columns back to "No Color".

When you select a fill color, that cell no longer has the mild grey border that marks it from its fellows. Most people can live with that, but I usually change the borders on such cells back to a light grey, which is the one that matches uncolored cells. You can make your own mind up about that.

Thanks! Btw, how to unhide the columns in case I suddenly find that I need more columns to work with?

Thankyou! What I'm actually doing is to make a document in excel for printing. I selected 'Over then Down' as the way it prints. And I adjusted the column widths so that, for example, A to E fit in the 1st page and F to J fit the 2nd. But I don't want it to display too many pages across the top of the worksheet. I want it to go over just two pages then down for the 3rd and 4th, and so on. This is why I need to know how to hide the columns that are not being used.

Filling the worksheet with mild grey can make the cells in the unused columns unseen. But this doesn't hide the column headers of the unused columns. That probably means excel would still regard those grey-out columns as 'active' on the worksheet. So, it might continue to go over across many columns when it prints.

Or, do you have any better suggestion for doing this task?

If your primary concern is which columns are displayed when you print, I believe there's a way to select the print range. I don't use printing much, so I can't tell you much about it, but I'm sure one of these other gurus will. Hey, guys, isn't there a way for him to specify the Print Area, limiting it to certain columns?

And by the way, officeboy, another option I rarely use is to print just the selection. I doubt that would work for you, but is it possible that you could select just one part of the worksheet and then Print Selection to get just that part on paper? Sounds clumsy, though, if it's possible at all, so other ways would be better if they're available.

Oh, and to answer your earlier question, the ability to unhide columns is in the Home tab of the ribbon; look to the right in the Cells section; choose Format, then "Hide & Unhide" and explore a little. Let me know if you have trouble with it, but I think it'll be clear enough once you play with it a bit.