Delete Sheet Columns in Excel

When you work in Excel, you may find yourself with columns that you no longer need. You might want to take these data-filled columns and shift other data back into place. Fortunately, Excel offers a great way to do exactly that. Let’s learn how to delete sheet columns in Microsoft Excel.

How to Delete Sheet Columns in Excel

When you build layouts in Excel spreadsheets, data is often placed across multiple columns. But imagine if you need to remove some of these columns. Simply deleting the data from the columns will leave them blank, but data in other columns won’t move. Consider an example. If you have data in columns A, B, and C, you could delete the values from column B. But column C will remain in position, leaving a blank column in the middle of your data.

This is where the Delete Sheet Columns feature comes in. By using Delete Sheet Columns, you can remove column B entirely. Column C will shift one position to the left, becoming the new column B. This eliminates unwanted data in Excel, while preventing blank columns from sitting in the midst of your sheets.

To use Delete Sheet Columns, click on the column header that you want to delete. Or, you can multi-select by holding down Command (Control on Windows).

Then, with columns selected, go to Excel’s Home tab on the ribbon. The ribbon is the series of menus across the top of the screen.

On the right side of the Home tab, you’ll see the Delete dropdown. Choose it, then click Delete Sheet Columns.

The selected column or columns will disappear. Columns to their right will shift into place, filling the void left by the deleted columns.

As you can see, it’s easy to use Delete Sheet Columns to seamlessly remove unwanted data in Microsoft Excel.