Converting a range to an Excel table is a one click decision that is easy to make and, later, easy to regret. The banded rows, the header filter arrows, and the bold style all show up instantly, and reversing it is not quite as obvious as turning it on. Here is the clean way to remove it, whether you want to keep the data as a table without the visual style, or get rid of the table altogether.
Removing just the visual style
Click anywhere inside the table so the Table Design tab appears in the ribbon. Open the Table Styles gallery, and at the very bottom of that dropdown, select Clear. This strips out the banded colors, borders, and header shading while leaving the table itself, including the filter arrows and structured references, fully intact.
Removing the table entirely
If you want the data to go back to being a plain range with no filter arrows and no table behaviour at all, go to Table Design, then Convert to Range. Do this after clearing the style if you want a genuinely plain range, since Convert to Range on its own keeps whatever visual formatting was already applied.
Why this trips people up
The confusion usually comes from expecting one button to undo everything. Style and structure are two separate things in Excel. Clear removes the look. Convert to Range removes the function. Knowing that they are independent settings makes the whole thing far less frustrating the next time it comes up.
This works the same way in every version of Excel from 2016 through current Microsoft 365, since the Tables feature itself has not fundamentally changed.
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