Cannot unhide column A?

I know… it sounds another silly thing in #Excel.  But I do believe many novice users have had this experience before.  If you were one of them, you would know how frustrating that would be.  I know, because I was one of them…  ;p

Perhaps all we know, we need to select at least two columns (with the hidden column(s) in between) in order to unhide columns.  Since there is no column on the left to column A, we may find it difficult to do such a simple thing.

Indeed, there are many ways we can do to unhide Column A.

1. Click on Column B (on top of the column header) and then drag to left.  We will see the tiny box “1048576R x 2C” as shown in the following GIF:

Yeah… we had just selected two columns and unhide column A successfully.

2. Select the whole sheet and unhide columns

First, click on the upper left intersection of row and column header…

… then right click on any column header –> Unhide

Yes, we made it… but all other hidden columns got unhidden.

This might not the thing that we wanted. 😦

3. Select any cell on column A, then unhide…

The question is… how could we select a cell that is hidden?

Answer: Simply type the cell reference in Name Box.

Tip: Hidden cell cannot be reached by normal navigation with mouse or arrow key.  We need Name Box or GoTo… to go to any cell (including hidden cells) on a sheet.

Once the active cell is on column A, we may unhide the active column(s) easily.  Go to HOME tab –> Cells group –> Format –> Hide & Unhide –> Unhide Columns

Tried all the above methods but neither worked?

See the following GIF…

Column A should have been unhidden as we could navigate to column A and B back and forth by using arrow keys.  But still, column A was not visible… WHY?

This should be one of the most frustrating moments in Excel.  No worries as you are about to solve this weird problem. 

If you had encountered this situation, there’s a high chance related to Column Width…

Try the following:

1. Select both column A and B.

2. Right-click column header B –> Column Width…

3. Set Column width to 8 (or any other number)

Our mysterious column A is back. 🙂

A similar situation on row was discussed in details in the post – When unhide row doesn’t work….

Still not seeing column A???

There is still a low chance that column A is still invisible to you after all of the above: You can navigate to column A by using arrow key; you checked the column width is wide enough to be displayed…

As the last resort, please check the following:

Make sure the panes/column is not frozen.  If it is frozen, you need to ♫Let it go… ♫Let it go♫… (by Unfreeze Panes).  🙂

IF, after doing all of the above, you still cannot see column A… then you may need to sing ♫Let it be… ♫Let it be♫ Let it be… 😛