How to Unhide a Chart in Excel

It’s a frustrating moment for any Excel user: a chart you meticulously created has vanished from your worksheet. You know it’s there somewhere, but it's not visible. This common issue can throw a wrench in your reporting process, but the good news is your work isn't lost. This guide will walk you through all the common methods to find and unhide any chart in Excel, from simple one-click fixes to troubleshooting less obvious settings.

Why Do Charts Go Missing in Excel?

Understanding why your chart disappeared is the first step to getting it back. Unlike data in a cell, an Excel chart is a floating object that lives on a layer above your worksheet grid. This object-based nature means it can be hidden in a few different ways that don't apply to cell data.

Here are the most common culprits:

• Hidden via the Selection Pane: The most frequent reason. Excel has a specific feature for hiding objects (like charts, shapes, and images) to reduce clutter, and it's easy to hide something by mistake.
• Hidden by Cell Filters: If a chart is anchored to cells and those cells are hidden by a filter, the chart can disappear along with them.
• Linked to Hidden Rows or Columns: Similar to filtering, if the chart’s display properties are set to "move and size with cells," manually hiding those rows or columns can make the chart invisible.
• Moved Off-Screen or Resized to a Tiny Speck: It might not be technically "hidden," just moved far away from the visible area of your worksheet or shrunk down to a size so small you can't see it.
• Workbook Display Settings are Disabled: A global setting in Excel Options can be set to hide all objects in a workbook.

Let's go through the fixes for each of these scenarios, starting with the most likely solution.

Method 1: The Go-To Fix - Using the Selection Pane

The Selection Pane is your command center for managing all objects on a worksheet. If a chart was simply hidden, this is the quickest way to bring it back. Think of it as a layer list, where you can toggle the visibility of every chart, image, and text box.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Navigate to the Home tab on Excel’s ribbon.
2. On the far right, in the 'Editing' group, click on Find & Select.
3. From the dropdown menu, choose Selection Pane…

The Selection Pane will appear on the right side of your screen. It lists every object on the current sheet. Hidden objects are indicated by an eye icon with a line through it.

How to Unhide a Chart in the Selection Pane:

• Find Your Chart: Scan the list for your chart. It will likely be named something generic like "Chart 1" or "Chart 2" unless you've renamed it.
• Click the Eye Icon: To the right of the chart name, you'll see a small eye icon. If there is a slash through it, the object is hidden. Simply click this icon. The slash will disappear, and your chart will instantly reappear on the worksheet.

Pro Tip: Take this opportunity to give your charts meaningful names in the Selection Pane. Just double-click on any object's name ("Chart 1") and type in a more descriptive title ("Monthly Revenue Chart"). This makes managing complex dashboards with many charts infinitely easier.

Method 2: Unhiding Rows and Columns

Sometimes, your chart isn’t actually hidden - the cells it's sitting on top of are. If a chart's properties are set to "Move and size with cells," it becomes part of the grid. When you hide rows or columns, the chart gets hidden right along with them.

Step 1: Check Your Chart Properties

You can see if this setting is enabled on another chart to diagnose the problem.

1. Right-click on any visible chart and select Format Chart Area…
2. In the pane that opens, click the Size & Properties icon (a green square with arrows).
3. Expand the Properties section.
4. Look at the options. If Move and size with cells is selected, this is likely your issue.

Step 2: Unhide All Rows and Columns

The easiest way to check if this is the problem is to unhide everything on the sheet.

1. Click the triangle in the top-left corner of the worksheet (between the 'A' column heading and '1' row heading) to select all cells.
2. Right-click on any row heading (like row 1 or 2) and select Unhide from the context menu.
3. Right-click on any column heading (like column A or B) and select Unhide again.

If your chart was tied to hidden cells, this will bring it back into view. If nothing appears, the chart was likely hidden using a different method.

Method 3: Finding Lost Charts with 'Go To Special'

What if the chart isn't hidden but has been accidentally moved way off-screen or shrunk to a pixel? The 'Go To Special' command is the perfect tool for locating these rogue objects.

Follow these steps to find any object on a sheet:

1. Press F5 on your keyboard (or Ctrl+G) to open the 'Go To' dialog box.
2. Click the Special… button in the bottom-left corner.
3. In the 'Go To Special' window, select the Objects option and click OK.

Excel will instantly select every object on the active worksheet. Even if your chart is far off the visible screen, you will now see its selection handles. The name of the selected object will also appear in the Name Box (to the left of the formula bar). At this point, you have a few options:

• If you can see the selected object on your screen, you can click and drag it or resize it as needed.
• If you still can't see the chart but know it's selected, you can use the alignment tools in the Shape Format tab (which appears when an object is selected) to bring it back into view.
• Alternatively, you can click in the formula bar, then use your mouse or tab key to switch over to the sheet and use the up/down arrows on your keyboard to slowly nudge the chart towards the center in small increments until you can grab it.

Method 4: Checking Workbook Display Options

In rare cases, a workbook-wide setting may be hiding all charts and objects. This affects every sheet in your Excel file and is an easy thing to check and fix.

1. Click on the File tab in the ribbon.
2. Select Options at the very bottom of the left menu.
3. In the 'Excel Options' window, click on the Advanced category.
4. Scroll down until you find the section titled "Display options for this workbook."
5. Find the setting labelled "For objects, show:". Make sure it is set to All.
6. If it's set to "Nothing (hide objects)," change it to "All" and click OK.

This will solve the issue if a global setting caused all shapes, charts, and buttons to disappear from your workbook.

Method 5: Unhiding a Chart Sheet

Last but not least, your chart might not be an object on a worksheet at all. Sometimes charts are created on their own dedicated sheet, known as a "Chart Sheet," which appears as a separate tab at the bottom of the workbook. Like any other worksheet, these chart sheets can be hidden from view.

If you suspect this is the case, the fix is straightforward:

1. Right-click on any visible sheet tab at the bottom of your Excel window.
2. Click Unhide… from the menu.
3. A new dialog box will pop up, listing all hidden sheets in your workbook, including any Chart Sheets.
4. Select the sheet you want to unhide and click OK.

The chart sheet will reappear as a new tab, displaying your full-sized chart.

Final Thoughts

Having a chart go missing in Excel can be alarming, but in most cases, your work is perfectly safe and just a few clicks from being recovered. By using the Selection Pane, unhiding cells, and leveraging the Go To Special command, you can almost always find and restore your visualizations, no matter where they've gone.

While mastering Excel is incredibly useful, managing dashboards can often feel like a time-consuming battle against hidden objects, manual data refreshes, and complicated report structures. We built Graphed to do away with this frustration. Instead of wrestling with static charts, you can create live, interactive dashboards from all your data sources just by asking questions in plain English. Everything connects and updates automatically, letting you spend time on insights, not on troubleshooting.