Understanding and managing workbooks & worksheets
Workbooks and worksheets
Workbooks
An Excel "file" is a workbook... like a three-ring binder full of pages. Each "page" is a worksheet. When you open or save a workbook, you are opening/saving every sheet in it. We are no longer dealing with individual "spreadsheets," each saved with a different name. Imagine the workbook (or "file") name as the name of the three-ring binder.
Excel's workbooks are its documents.
Worksheets
Each worksheet can contain 256 columns and over 16,000 rows. The name of the sheet appears on the sheet's tab, just like a tab on a page of a three-ring binder. Click a worksheet's tab to select it and "pull it to the top." If necessary, use the tab scroll buttons to locate the tab you desire.
Managing workbooks & worksheets
These procedures will help you effectively manage workbooks and worksheets.
Select and group worksheets
To select one sheet
To select more than one sheet
- Use CTRL+click and SHIFT+click to select multiple sheets, or right-click a tab and choose Select All for all sheets. This is referred to as grouping worksheets. Each action you perform will apply to all selected sheets.
To ungroup sheets
- Click any one sheet (tab) or right-click a sheet and choose Ungroup Sheets.
Manage worksheets
Right-click the worksheet tab to
- Insert a worksheet
- Delete a worksheet
- Move or copy a worksheet between workbooks (or within a workbook)
Move or copy a worksheet within a workbook (shortcut)
- Drag (to move) or CTRL+drag (to copy) the worksheet's tab
Copy a worksheet as a kind of "template"
- Copy the original sheet by holding the CTRL key and dragging the original sheet's tab.
or
Right-click the tab, choose Move or Copy and then select the Create a copy checkbox.
- Rename the new sheet by right-clicking its tab and choosing Rename.
- Worksheet names can be up to 31 characters.
- Delete raw data (don't delete the formulas!).
- Ignore errors: Your formulas may suddenly produce errors, but that is OK! Don't worry... once data is entered on the sheet, the errors will begin to disappear.
This method is generally the most effective way to copy a worksheet, however it does limit the copying of cell contents to 255 characters per cell. Therefore, if you have cells with greater than 255 characters, you will receive a warning to this effect when you copy the sheet. Go ahead and copy the sheet anyway, so that the sheet, columns, rows, names, and formatting is copied correctly. Then, do a second copy and paste of just the cells. To do this, return to the source sheet and press CTRL+A. Then choose Copy. Return to the newly copied sheet and select cell A1. Choose Paste.