A study has been made of the effects of temper rolling on the grain growth in strain annealing of IF steel sheet. A 92.5% cold rolled and annealed IF steel sheet was temper rolled by 0.4%, 0.8% and 1.2% and subsequently annealed at 670degreesC for various time periods. The grains started to grow abnormally underneath the surface and grew into the center during strain annealing after 0.4% temper rolling. However, the grains did not grow after temper rolling by 0.8 and 1.2%. The pole figure and EBSD measurements showed that the abnormally grown grains of 0.4% temper rolled IF steel sheet did not have any special orientation relationship with the primary recrystallization texture. A major grain growth mechanism was regarded to be the strain induced grain boundary migration rather than grain boundary characteristics.