How Can You Navigate and Format Excel Worksheet?

4 Tips to Navigating and Using Excel

Learn high-level tips and tricks to get started in Excel master. Contact BC Networks with your software and hardware questions and needs.

With a minimum of 750 million users, Microsoft Excel is still the most popular spreadsheet in the world. Entire books have been written about how to navigate and format Microsoft Excel workbooks. Here, we concentrate on high-level tips and tricks to get you started and point you toward valuable resources that help you become an Excel master. Learn how to do the following in Excel:

• Navigating Through Worksheets
• Inserting and Deleting Worksheets
• Renaming, Moving and Copying Worksheets
• Formatting Worksheets

How Do I Navigate Between Worksheets?

Worksheet Tab Controls are located at the bottom left of the workbook. They look like two pairs of left and right arrows. Use the arrows to navigate left or right through the worksheets or to go to the first or last worksheet.

When you right-click on the controls, a pop-up list of all worksheets in the workbook appears. Simply click on the sheet name to navigate to it.

If there are more than 15 worksheets, select the More Sheets…. option. In the Activate dialog box, you can scroll through the worksheets to select the one you wish to navigate to.

What’s the Best Way to Insert and Delete Worksheets?

Follow these steps to insert or delete worksheets.

Inserting a Worksheet

1. Choose the Select + plus icon at the bottom of the sheet. (It should appear next to the last worksheet tab.)

Or, use the file menu. File> New > Blank Worksheet.

Delete a Worksheet

1. Right-click on the Sheet tab of the sheet you want to delete.
2. Select delete.

Or, select the sheet, and then go to the Home ribbon. Delete > Delete Sheet.

How Can I Rename, Move and Copy Excel Worksheets?

Follow these steps to rename, move or copy sheets.

Rename a Worksheet

To rename a worksheet:

1. Double-click on the sheet name and type in the new name.

Or, right-click the Sheet tab, select Rename, and enter the new name.

Move a Worksheet

To move a worksheet, click on the worksheet tab and drag it to the desired position.

Copy a Worksheet

It’s easy to copy a worksheet to have a formatted working template.

1. Right click the worksheet tab and select Copy.
2. Click on the “Create a copy” checkbox.
3. Look for the Before sheet option and select a sheet.
4. Click OK.

What Are Some Essential Formatting Tips?

Use formatting to make your spreadsheet pop. Users can consume complex graphs and financial information much more easily if they are well-formatted. Here are some tips to spruce up your sheets.

Bold, Underline and Italics

These basic formatting tools draw the user’s attention to important text.
To use these effects, highlight the appropriate cells, go to Home>Font, and apply the desired formatting.

Apply Borders

Borders segment complex data and carve out sections of like measures. Excel has a variety of borders to choose from.

1. Highlight the cells you want to apply a border to.
2. Go to Home>Font>Borders
3. Use the dropdown menu to pick a border style such as single or double lines.

Use Shading

Shading, or fill, is a cell background color. You can shade a cell by following these steps:

1. Highlight a cell or group of cells.
2. Go to Home>Font>Fill Color.
3. Click the down arrow to the right of the paint bucket. Choose the color you want for the cell background.

While we have covered some of the basic elements of Excel formatting, this robust tool has hundreds of ways to customize your worksheets. Learn more at Microsoft support.