How to Decide When to Use Worksheets and Workbooks in Excel

A "workbook" is a Microsoft Excel file. Each workbook can hold many "worksheets" (individual spreadsheets). Use multiple worksheets to group related data. For example, you might have a sheet for each quarter's detailed budget, plus a sheet for a streamlined version of the yearly budget. You can reference cells in other sheets: your yearly budget, for example, could reference data from the quarterly sheets. The following steps work with Excel 97.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Excel Book
• Microsoft Excel

1. Use multiple worksheets when creating spreadsheets for several related groups of information.
2. Don't use multiple worksheets if your spreadsheets aren't related - create a new workbook instead.
3. Don't use multiple worksheets to create "what if" scenarios for the same group of information (for example, best case, worst case, and most likely scenarios for one budget); use the Scenarios command in the Tools menu instead.
4. To go to a new worksheet, click its tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet window.
5. To use data from one worksheet in another worksheet's formula, just select the cells you want to refer to and paste them in the formula as you would other cells.

Tips & Warnings

• See the related eHows to learn how to add, delete, copy or rename a worksheet.
• If sheets in your workbook will use similar formatting, you can create the first sheet, then save it as a template and use it as the basis for subsequent sheets. (Use the Save As command in the File menu to save the worksheet as a template.)

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