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
- Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
- Click “Insert”
Insert Sheet - Select “Worksheet” from the “Insert Window”
Insert Sheet Window - Click “OK”
- A new sheet is added to the file
Rename a worksheet
Following is the steps to rename a sheet
- Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
- Click “Rename Sheet”
Rename Sheet Menu - Rename the sheet (for example from “Sheet2” to “Sheet2 – New”)
Rename Sheet – Old Name - Click anywhere outside the label
Rename Sheet – New Name - Your sheet is renamed
Move a worksheet
There a two ways to move a sheet
MOVE A SHEETS – Using the Move or Copy window
Following is the steps to move a sheets using the Move or Copy window
- Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
- Click “Move or Copy”
Move Sheet Menu - Select “Worksheet” from the “Insert Window”
- Select the new location of the sheet
Move or Copy sheet window – Move (Note: This window also allow you to move sheets between different files or the a new file.)
- Click “OK”
- 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
- Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
- Click “Move or Copy”
Move Sheet Menu - Select “Worksheet” from the “Insert Window”
- Select the new location of the sheet and click “Create a copy”
Move of Copy Sheet window (Note: This window also allow you to move sheets between different files or the a new file.)
- Click “OK”
- 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
- Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
- Click “Tab Color”
Change Tab Colour Menu - Select a colour for the sheet
Change Tab Colour to red - Your tab colour is changed accordingly.
Change Tab Colour to red – result
DELETE A SHEET
Following is the steps to delete a sheet
- Right click (Alt click) the sheet name at the bottom and the alternative menu will be displayed
- Click “Delete”
Delete sheet Menu - The sheet is deleted
Note
- 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.
- 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.