Worksheet Manipulation in Excel 2007
Microsoft Excel offers a number of different ways of inserting new sheets into your workbooks. One of the most straightforward methods is to use the Insert Worksheet button. This can be found to the right of the worksheet tabs. Irrespective of which worksheet is active, clicking this button will always insert a worksheet as the last tab in your workbook.
Excel also allows you to insert a worksheet at a given position within the workbook. For example, let\’s say that we have a workbook containing all of the invoices issued by our company for each month of the year. There would be twelve worksheets named \”January\”, \”February\”, and so forth. Suppose we now want to insert quarterly analysis sheets at the end of each quarter.
As is the case with columns, Excel inserts new worksheets to the left of the currently selected tab. Therefore, in order to insert the first quarterly analysis sheet, we would select the April tab. However, as we have seen, we can\’t use the Insert Worksheet button to insert the new sheet since it will always go at the end. We would therefore use the Insert command in the Cells section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon.
We could also right-click on the \”April\” tab and choose Insert. Excel then allows us to choose the type of sheet we want to insert. As well as worksheet, we can insert a chart sheet, a backwardly compatible macro sheet or dialog sheet. These are useful for Excel developers. In addition we can insert a spreadsheet solution such as the billing statement or sales report. To insert a worksheet, in the General tab of the Insert dialogue, click on worksheet then click OK.
Next, we would rename the sheet; let\’s say \”Qtr1 Analysis\” and then repeat the same procedure to insert analysis sheets to the left of the \”July\” and \”October\” tabs. Since the analysis sheet of the fourth quarter will be the last sheet in the workbook, we can only add a worksheet in this position by using the Insert Worksheet button.
To delete the selected worksheet, use the Delete Sheets command in the Cells group of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon. It is also possible to delete a sheet by right-clicking the sheet tab and choosing Delete from the context menu. To delete several sheets at once, highlight the relevant tabs and then using the Delete Sheet command.
Selecting multiple sheets involves the use of the classic Windows techniques of Shift-click and Control-click. To select a contiguous range of sheet tabs, click on the first, hold down the Shift key and click on the last. To select a non-contiguous range of tabs, click on the first, hold down the Control key and click on each of the others.
To deselect a selected range of tabs, click on a tab which isn\’t selected. If all tabs are selected, just click on the name of any tab to select only that tab.
The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with OnSiteTrainingCourses.Com, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel training courses in London and throughout the UK.