Part I: Getting Started with Excel
You also can display a single workbook in more than one window. For example, if you have a workbook with two work-
sheets, you may want to display each worksheet in a separate window to compare the two sheets. All of the window
manipulation procedures described previously still apply. See “Viewing a worksheet in multiple windows” later in this
chapter.Closing windows
If you have multiple windows open, you may want to close those windows that you no lon-
ger need. Excel offers several ways to close the active window.■ (^) Choose File ➪ Close.
■ Click the Close button (the X icon) on the right side of the workbook window’s title
bar.
■ Press Alt+F4.
■ (^) P ress Ctrl+W.
When you close a workbook window, Excel checks whether you have made any changes
since the last time you saved the file. If you have made changes, Excel prompts you to save
the file before it closes the window. If you haven’t, the window closes without a prompt
from Excel.
Sometimes you will be prompted to save a workbook even if you’ve made no changes to it.
This occurs if your workbook contains any volatile functions. Volatile functions recalculate
every time the workbook recalculates. For example, if a cell contains =NOW(), you will be
prompted to save the workbook because the NOW function updated the cell with the current
date and time.
Activating a worksheet
At any given time, one workbook is the active workbook, and one sheet is the active sheet
in the active workbook. To activate a different sheet, just click its sheet tab, which is
located at the bottom of the workbook window. You also can use the following shortcut
keys to activate a different sheet:
■ (^) Ctrl+PgUp activates the previous sheet, if one exists.
■ Ctrl+PgDn activates the next sheet, if one exists.
If your workbook has many sheets, all of its tabs may not be visible. Use the tab scrolling
controls (see Figure 3.2) to scroll the sheet tabs. Clicking the scrolling controls scrolls one
tab at a time, and Ctrl+clicking scrolls to the first or last sheet. The sheet tabs share space
with the worksheet’s horizontal scrollbar. You also can drag the tab split control (to the
left of the horizontal scrollbar) to display more or fewer tabs. Dragging the tab split control
simultaneously changes the number of visible tabs and the size of the horizontal scrollbar.