4 Shortcuts To Delete Excel Worksheets

4 Easy Ways To Delete Excel Worksheets

Below are four different shortcuts to delete Excel worksheets.  The second one is the fastest, and hence my favorite.

(1) Right-clicking: RC-<Delete> while hovering over the tab.  You’ll see the following when right-clicking over the tab — just click on Delete:

(2) Hybrid shortcut: RC-D (Right-Click, followed by typing ‘D’).  This does the same thing as RC-<Delete>, except you’re using the hot key instead of clicking.  The ‘D’ is underlined in Delete, which means you can just type ‘D’ instead of clicking on Delete.  I call this a “hybrid” shortcut since it combines mouse and keyboard into one shortcut.  This is the fastest (typing ‘D’ is faster than clicking on ‘Delete’).

(3) Alt sequence: Alt-H-D-S.  This is basically Home > Delete> Sheet (which is painfully slow), but using your keyboard instead of the mouse.  You’ll probably need your right hand to type the ‘H’, which is inconvenient if you’re used to having your right hand on the mouse (like me).

(4) “Legacy” Alt sequence: Alt-E-L.  This is an Alt sequence that you really can’t follow on the screen anymore (you won’t see any hot keys appear), since it’s a ghost-like or “zombie” carryover from Excel 2003 (those Alt sequences were preserved, even though the ribbon menu has changed).  Typing the ‘L’ in this shortcut requires your right hand.

So to recap, you can delete an Excel worksheet using any of the following shortcuts:

(1) RC-<Delete>

(2) RC-D (the fastest)

(3) Alt-H-D-S

(4) Alt-E-L

Enjoy!