Part I: Getting Started with Excel
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Adding a new worksheet to your workbook ..............................................................
Worksheets can be an excellent organizational tool. Instead of placing everything on a single work-
sheet, you can use additional worksheets in a workbook to separate various workbook elements
logically. For example, if you have several products whose sales you track individually, you may
want to assign each product to its own worksheet and then use another worksheet to consolidate
your results.The following are three ways to add a new worksheet to a workbook:l Click the Insert Worksheet control, which is located to the right of the last sheet tab. This
method inserts the new sheet after the last sheet in the workbook.
l Press Shift+F11. This method inserts the new sheet before the active sheet.l (^) Right-click a sheet tab, choose Insert from the shortcut menu, and click the General tab of
the Insert dialog box that appears. Then select the Worksheet icon and click OK. This
method inserts the new sheet before the active sheet.
Deleting a worksheet you no longer need ..................................................................
If you no longer need a worksheet, or if you want to get rid of an empty worksheet in a workbook,
you can delete it in either of two ways:l Right-click its sheet tab and choose Delete from the shortcut menu.l (^) Activate the unwanted worksheet and choose Home ➪ Cells ➪ Delete ➪ Delete Sheet. If
the worksheet contains any data, Excel asks you to confirm that you want to delete the
sheet. If you’ve never used the worksheet, Excel deletes it immediately without asking for
confirmation.
Tip
You can delete multiple sheets with a single command by selecting the sheets that you want to delete. To select
multiple sheets, press Ctrl while you click the sheet tabs that you want to delete. To select a group of contigu-
ous sheets, click the first sheet tab, press Shift, and then click the last sheet tab. Then use either method to
delete the selected sheets. n
Caution
When you delete a worksheet, it’s gone for good. Deleting a worksheet is one of the few operations in Excel
that can’t be undone. n
Changing the name of a worksheet
The default names that Excel uses for worksheets — Sheet1, Sheet2, and so on — aren’t very
descriptive. If you don’t change the worksheet names, remembering where to find things in multi-
ple-sheet workbooks can be a bit difficult. That’s why providing more meaningful names for your
worksheets is often a good idea.