Is your Excel workbook growing out of control? Maybe it’s time to group worksheets. Let’s learn how to group worksheets in Excel.
Why Group Worksheets in Excel?
Spreadsheet hygiene matters. Formula errors can completely disrupt your work and lead you to make the wrong decision. By grouping and organizing your workbook, you’ll help prevent errors and work quickly within the file.
Group Worksheets in Excel
Select a group of worksheets in Excel by holding Control on your keyboard, and clicking on the worksheets you wish to select. Notice that they change color slightly to show that they are part of the selected group. They’ll light up in a light grey shade to show that you have them selected.
Another way to select a group of sheets is to hold Shift on your keyboard and select another sheet. This selects all sheets in a range.
After you select a group of worksheets, you can move them all at one time. Just click and drag to move the group of worksheets to a specific sequence in the workbook.
Use Color to Signal Groups
After you’ve moved the spreadsheets into your preferred order, you can create “virtual groups” by styling them with similar colors. Right-click on a spreadsheet tab and choose Tab Color , then choose a corresponding color. This changes the color of the tab in your workbook.
It also helps to use what I call a “style guide” for Microsoft Excel. For example, set all of your input tabs to a consistent color. My colleagues work in my files often enough to know that the red sheets are for input, blue sheets are for assumptions, and green sheets are for finished analysis work. It’s this type of consistency that helps you create groups for your spreadsheets, keeping similar types of sheets side-by-side.
Square Root in Excel