Adding, Naming, Moving, & Copying Worksheets

Excel workbooks are made up of worksheets, and as you see in this workbook, I have multiple worksheets, all of them named to tell me what's on each sheet.

As I click on the sheet tabs, the view changes to display that worksheet, much like flipping through the tabs on folders in a file drawer.

Now, when I start a new workbook, which I do by pressing CTRL + N (as in New), Excel gives me a brand new workbook, with 1 starter worksheet—named Sheet1.

As I will need more sheets, I can add them quickly and easily by clicking the small plus sign to the right of the tabs. Each click adds a new sheet, and they're numbered consecutively, and now I have sheets 1,2, 3, and 4.

Note that each new sheet appears to the right of the active sheet, so when I click on Sheet 2 and then click the New Sheet plus sign, Sheet 5 appears next to that, rather than falling in right after Sheet 4. Knowing this will help you in the future, so that you can control where a new sheet will appear.

Now, to rename your sheets, because "Sheet1" and "Sheet2" aren't really useful names, just double-click the current name. This highlights the name, and then the name you type replaces it. You can either press ENTER or click into a cell on the sheet to commit to the new name. I’m going to name my sheets for the first quarter of the year – January, February, and March.

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To rearrange your sheets, just drag them with your mouse—here I'll move one of the as yet unnamed sheets and place it in front of the January Sheet, and then rename it Summary. Notice the little triangles that appear as you drag the sheet tabs.

And as I no longer need this last unnamed sheet, I'll right-click it and choose Delete from the popup menu—and without any hesitation, the sheet is gone.

Now, if your sheet has any content in it—as I'll simulate by adding content to one of the cells in this remaining sheet—if you right-click and choose Delete, a prompt appears, asking you to confirm that you want to delete that sheet. It's a safeguard to protect you from accidentally deleting data you didn't mean to lose.

I’m going to cancel this and not delete the sheet.

Now, as I showed you earlier, you can rearrange your sheets by dragging them, but you can also make copies of them to move to another spot in the same workbook or to copy to a different workbook entirely.

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If I right-click the Summary sheet and choose Move or Copy from the pop-up menu, I can click the Create a copy checkbox and then choose a different workbook to copy the sheet to. I can also choose where within that workbook's sheets to add the copied sheet, by clicking on one of them in the list of sheets. Note that now I have a new Summary sheet – a copy of the original one – in the other workbook.

Now when I switch back to the new workbook, notice that I can do the same thing, but within the current workbook, and I've made a copy of Summary, and Excel put a 2 at the end of the sheet name so I know it's a duplicate.

And here's a tip—if you'd rather, to copy sheets within the same workbook, just drag the existing sheet while pressing the CTRL key, and that, too, will make a copy of the sheet—but only within the same workbook. Now I have Summary 3.

Now, I don’t need these 2 extra Summary sheets, so I’ll just right-click and delete, as I showed you earlier – but with a slight variation. If I CTRL click on the sheet tabs, I can select them both – so I’ll click on Summary 3, then press the CTRL key and click on Summary 2. Now they’re both selected, as you can see by their bolded sheet tab names. When I right-click and choose Delete now, they’re both removed.

So—it's up to you how many sheets you have, what they're called, and the order they appear in the workbook—or any other workbook. You're in control!

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