How to manipulate worksheets in Excel

How to manipulate worksheets in Excel? As mentioned from my other blogs – How to create a new excel file? – an Excel spreadsheet can have multiple sheets in one file. You can add, rename, move, delete, hide, unhide entire spreadsheet as long as to change colour of the spreadsheet.

If you are using Excel 2010 or earlier version, once you created a “Blank Workbook” your excel will automatically create a new file with 3 sheets

• Sheet1
• Sheet2
• Sheet3

However, since Excel 2013, your application should default to only 1 sheets. To add a new sheet, you can simply click the button after the last sheets in your excel file.

The blog will illustrate how to manipulate sheets in Excel.

You can add, rename, move, copy and delete sheets and also changed the tab colour of the sheet.

Add Worksheets

Following is the steps to add sheets in excel

1. Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
2. Click “Insert”

   

3. Select “Worksheet” from the “Insert Window”

   

4. Click “OK”
5. A new sheet is added to the file

Rename a worksheet

Following is the steps to rename a sheet

1. Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
2. Click “Rename Sheet”

   
3. Rename the sheet (for example from “Sheet2” to “Sheet2 – New”)

   
4. Click anywhere outside the label

   

5. Your sheet is renamed

Move a worksheet

There a two ways to move a sheet

1. drag and drop the sheet

   

2. Using the Move or Copy window
3. The sheet is moved

MOVE A SHEETS  – Using the Move or Copy window

Following is the steps to move a sheets using the Move or Copy window

1. Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
2. Click “Move or Copy”

   

3. Select “Worksheet” from the “Insert Window”
4. Select the new location of the sheet

   

   (Note: This window also allow you to move sheets between different files or the a new file.)

5. Click “OK”
6. Your sheet is moved accordingly.

Copy a worksheet – Using the Move or Copy window

You can also copy the existing sheet by using the Move or Copy Window. Following is the steps

1. Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
2. Click “Move or Copy”

   

3. Select “Worksheet” from the “Insert Window”
4. Select the new location of the sheet and click “Create a copy”

   

   (Note: This window also allow you to move sheets between different files or the a new file.)

5. Click “OK”
6. Your sheet is copied accordingly.

If you need to copy all data from an entire sheet, copy the entire sheet will always perform better than copying every cells in the sheet, in a very large spreadsheet.

Change Tab Color of the worksheet

In an excel spreadsheet with a lot of multiple sheets, it will be much easier for a reader if labels are organised with different colours.

Following is the steps to colour the tab

1. Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
2. Click “Tab Color”

   

3. Select a colour for the sheet

   
4. Your tab colour is changed accordingly.

   

DELETE A SHEET

Following is the steps to delete a sheet

1. Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
2. Click “Delete”

   

3. The sheet is deleted

Note

1. You can delete multiple sheet in one go by pressing the “Shift” button and select all sheets you wish to delete before right click the menu.
2. No matter how many sheets have you selected, this operation is non-reversible. (i.e. you cannot “undelete” a sheet)

However, deleted a sheet by mistake may not be the end of the world, please my other blog – How to recover a deleted sheet in Excel? – for some tips.