Managing Worksheets
At the bottom of each worksheet in an Excel document window is a tab that displays the name of the worksheets in the workbook. By default, Excel names these worksheets names Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3, and so on. These names are not descriptive enough to reflect what they may contain. For example, if your workbook contains your annual sales for the last 5 years, you may want to name Sheet1 as Sales2015, Sheet2 as Sales2016, etc. In addition to renaming a worksheet, there are other options that you can use to manage your workbook.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
- add new worksheets to a workbook
- rename worksheets
- delete worksheets
- hide or unhide worksheets
- move or copy worksheets
- save worksheets
How to insert a new worksheet
By default, worksheet tabs appear as Sheet1 or Sheet1, Sheet2, etc. at the bottom of each workbook as in Figure 1.
Sometimes, you may want to insert additional blank worksheets into your existing workbook if you need more than the default number of worksheets.
You can use any of the following methods outlined here in order to introduce a new worksheet into a workbook:
Method 1
A short video on how to insert a new worksheet into a workbook is presented in Figure 2:
Fig 2: Inserting a new worksheet
Alternatively, you can use the following step by step procedure to insert a new worksheet into your workbook:
- Right-click the name of a Sheet tab.
- Click Insert… in the Context menu shown in Figure 3.
- Select Worksheet as in Figure 4.
- Press OK.
Method 2
If the Excel version has + on the Sheet tab, then you can follow these steps in order to insert a new worksheet into your workbook:
- Go to the bottom of the Excel window.
- Go to the extreme right of the worksheet tabs.
- Click the + symbol as shown in Figure 5.
Method 3
Also, you can add a new worksheet by doing the following task:
- Go to the bottom of the Excel window.
- Go to the extreme right of the worksheet tabs.
- Click the small tab with a folder-like icon as in Figure 6.
You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+F1 to create a new worksheet tab in Excel workbook.
How to rename a worksheet
The video in Figure 7 explains a very simple method for renaming a default worksheet.
Fig 7: Renaming a worksheet
How to delete a worksheet
Watch the short video (Figure 8) on how to delete an existing worksheet from a workbook.
Fig 7: Deleting a worksheet
In addition to the procedure shown in Figure 7, you can also use any of the following methods to delete a worksheet from your workbook.
Method 1
In this procedure, you do the following tasks in order to delete an existing worksheet from a workbook:
- Select the Sheet tabS
- Select Home ribbon tab
- Select Delete option
- Click on Delete Sheet
Method 2
Alternatively, you can delete a worksheet by doing the following task:
- Right-click the Sheet tab
- Select the icon
- Click on Delete
How to move or copy a worksheet
You can use the Move or Copy Sheet commands to move or copy entire worksheets to other locations in the same or a different workbook. A short video in Figure 8 shows how you can move or copy a worksheet.
Fig 8: Moving or copying a worksheet. Courtesy: Microsoft Corporation.
Method 1
You can also use any of the following methods move or copy a worksheet from a source workbook to a target workbook.
To move a worksheet (Sales18 in profit18) to another workbook (profit19), do the following:
- Open workbook profit19.
- Open workbook profit18.
- Place the workbooks side-by-side as in Figure 9.
- Right-click the Sales18 tab in profit18 to open the context menu as in Figure 10
- Select Move or Copy from the context menu.
- Select profit19 name from the To Book list (combo box) as in Figure 11,
- Choose the “Before sheet” as in Fig 12.
- Click OK.
At the end of a lesson is a short quiz to evaluate the extent to which you have understood the lesson. All learners are encouraged to participate in the quizzes. Quiz 2 is the quiz for this lesson.
Bibliography
Computer Hope. (2020). Create a worksheet in Excel. Retrieved from https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001783.html
Eduglobal. (n.d.). Worksheet basics. Retrieved from https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/excel2010/worksheet-basics/1/spreadsheet
Exceltip. (n.d.) Home tap in Microsoft Excel. Retrieved from tapwww.exceltip.com/basic-excel/home-tab-in-microsoft-excel.htmlrow heading
Helen, B. (2013). Using the Excel 2013 interface. Retrieved from https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2012471&seqNum=5