Not Able To View Tabs In Google Sheets

We had an issue this week of not being able to view the worksheet tabs across the bottom of a Google Sheet spreadsheet. This one was extremely annoying as I couldn’t see the screen of the user in question. Oddly, when I opened up the same sheet, I couldn’t either. But simply scrolling down brought the tabs into view. Didn’t work for the person I was helping, though. So, I poked around the internets and found this discussion in Google Docs Help. There are a couple of things they recommend.

  • if you have the Ask toolbar in your browser, remove it
  • try opening the spreadsheet using “incognito mode”
  • if that works, then we need to disable extensions until we determine the one causing the problem
  • try resizing the browser screen
  • try using Firefox (or another browser. If you’re in Firefox, then try Chrome or IE)

Anyway, I hope you find this helpful. Let me know in the comments.

Update: this came up again today. For this case, the line across the bottom of the Chrome window which pops-up when you download a file was blocking the tabs view. Make sure you close that window!

Download Popup Box