How to delete multiple rows in Google Sheets

Deleting multiple rows in Google Sheets means removing one or more rows of data from your sheet. This action permanently removes the selected rows, along with any data they contain, from your sheet. Once you delete the rows, you cannot undo the deletion, so it’s important to make sure you have a backup of your data or that you’re certain you no longer need it before proceeding. Deleting rows can be useful when you need to clean up your sheet, reorganize your data, or remove unnecessary or irrelevant information.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to delete multiple rows in google sheets. In our data set above, an order of customers is shown along with the price of each item, but the customer wants to cancel a few items from the order so we have to delete multiple rows(adjacent and non-adjacent). For this, we first selected the rows to be deleted and then deleted them once using the Delete option from the context menu or from the Edit tab. The following steps will guide you to Select multiple columns and to Delete them.

Method 1: Delete Multiple Non Adjacent Rows using the Edit Tab

Step 1 – Select the Rows

• Select the Rows to be deleted
• To select multiple rows click on Row Heading of the first row(to be deleted)
• Now press the Ctrl key 
• Click on the Row heading of the other rows that you want to delete while holding down the Ctrl key.

Step 2 – Click on the Edit tab

• Click on the Edit tab and a dropdown menu will appear

Step 3 – Locate the option to Delete Selected Rows

• From the dropdown menu click on the arrow next to the Delete option and a side menu will appear
• From this menu click on selected rows to get the required result

Method 2: Delete Multiple Non Adjacent Rows using the Context Menu

Step 1 – Select the Rows

• Select the Rows to be deleted
• To select multiple rows click on Row Heading of the first row(to be deleted)
• Now press the Ctrl key 
• Click on the Row heading of the other rows that you want to delete while holding down the Ctrl key.

Step 2 – Open the Context Menu

• After selecting the rows to be deleted, Right Click on the selected cell and context menu will appear

Step 3 – Click on Delete Selected Rows

• From the Context menu, Click on delete selected rows option to get the required result

Method 3: Delete Multiple Adjacent Rows Using Context menu

Step 1 – Select the Rows

• Click on the row heading of the first row to be deleted
• After clicking on Row heading Press the “Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow” keys to select the rows

Step 2 – Right Click to open the context menu

• After selecting the row right click anywhere in the selected region and the Context menu will appear.

Step 3 – Click on the Delete Rows option

• In the context menu click on the Delete rows option to get the required result
• In our case, we’ll see delete rows 4-7 because we have selected rows from 4 to 7.

Method 4: Delete Multiple Adjacent Rows using the Edit tab

Step 1 – Select the Rows

• Click on the row heading of the first row to be deleted
• After clicking on Row heading Press the “Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow” keys to select the rows

Step 2 – Click on the Edit tab

• Click on the Edit tab and a dropdown menu will appear

Step 3 – Locate the Selected rows option inside Delete Menu

• In the drop-down menu Click on the arrow next to the delete option and a side menu will appear.
• From this menu click on the selected rows option to get the required result.