Selecting, adding and renaming worksheets

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. A shopkeeper keeps sales for January, February and March in one Excel file. How does he keep each month separate? With worksheets. Today we learn to select, add and rename them.

First, two terms. A workbook is the whole Excel file, saved with the .xlsx extension. A worksheet is one sheet of rows and columns inside that workbook. The sheet tabs at the bottom of the window show each worksheet. In recent Excel versions, a new workbook starts with one sheet named Sheet 1, while older versions started with three.

The selected sheet is called the active sheet, and its tab looks highlighted. To select a sheet, click its tab. Press Ctrl+Page Down to move to the next sheet. Press Ctrl+Page Up to move to the previous sheet. If there are many sheets, right-click the small arrows left of the tabs to see a list of all sheets.

Sometimes you need many sheets at once. For sheets side by side, click the first tab, then Shift+click the last tab. For sheets that are not together, hold Ctrl and click each tab. To select every sheet, right-click any tab and choose Select All Sheets.

When many sheets are selected, Excel is in group mode. The word Group appears in the title bar at the top. Anything you type in one sheet is typed in all the selected sheets. This is useful when every month needs the same headings. To stop, right-click a tab and choose Ungroup Sheets.

Pause and predict. The sheets for January, February and March are grouped. You type Total in cell A1 of the January sheet. What is in cell A1 of the March sheet? It also shows Total, because grouped sheets receive the same typing.

There are four ways to add a worksheet. Click the plus button next to the tabs, and the new sheet appears after the active sheet. Press Shift+F11, and it appears before the active sheet. On the Home tab, click Insert and then Insert Sheet, which also adds it before. Or right-click a tab, choose Insert, pick Worksheet, and click OK.

Here is a quick trick for adding several sheets. Select three sheet tabs together, using Shift and click. Then use Insert Sheet from the Home tab. Excel adds three new sheets in one go.

Names like Sheet 1 and Sheet 2 tell us nothing, so we rename them. The fastest way is to double-click the sheet tab. Or right-click the tab and choose Rename. Or, on the Home tab, click Format and then Rename Sheet. The tab name gets highlighted, so type the new name and press Enter.

Excel has strict rules for sheet names. A name can have up to thirty one characters, including spaces. It cannot use the backslash, slash, question mark, star, square brackets or colon. A name cannot be blank. Two sheets in one workbook cannot have the same name. The word History is reserved by Excel, so you cannot use it.

Follow good habits, not just the rules. Keep names short and meaningful, like Jan underscore Sales. Use the same pattern for every sheet, so the file looks neat. Keep the sheets in a sensible order, such as January first.

Let us revise what we learned today. A workbook holds many worksheets. Click a tab to select one, and use Shift or Ctrl to select many. Remember that grouped sheets all receive your typing. Add a sheet with the plus button, Shift+F11 or Insert Sheet. Rename by double-clicking the tab, using up to thirty one characters.