Working With Excel Sheets

Working with sheets in an Excel document is a fundamental skill. In this guide, I will show you how to work with them.

Working With Excel Sheets

When working with a workbook in Excel, you will eventually have to work with different sheets. It is common to add, rename, and switch to different sheets. You can add a sheet with a mouse click, which is convenient. Next to the current sheet, you can click to add a new sheet. You can also right click it to rename it. Then, you can drag it to place it in the order you want, if you have several sheets.

• To add a new sheet
• Next to current sheet on list, click new sheet
• Right click the new sheet to rename it if you need to
• You can drag the sheet to place it in the order you need

To switch between sheets, click the one that you want. Copying a sheet is often done too. To do this, right click the sheet you want to copy and select copy. Then, select “create a copy” and “move to end”. This places your new sheet at the end of your list. You use the same process to move a sheet to another workbook file. 

Cells

Information has to be added to cells and edited constantly. So, learning some shortcuts will save you time. Adding or editing information into cells is simple. You click a cell to highlight it and type what you want. To add to the cell without erasing it, double click in the cell. This gives you a point to interact within the cell. You can also modify the contents of a cell using the formula bar. This bar is at the top. It is usually used for formulas but you can edit the contents as well. 

There are multiple ways to clear a cell. The method you use depends on whether you need to clear the formatting as well. Select the cell or cells that you want to clear and select the delete button on your keyboard. This method does not clear the formatting of a cell. To get of any formatting:

• Home
• Editing
• Clear
• Clear format or clear all

Cells can be autofilled. This is helpful as it can save a lot of time. To get autofill to work, you should enter in the first couple of cells. Excel will try to detect a pattern and then replicate it.Select the first cell in your list, hold the mouse pointer at the bottom right corner, then select the little plus sign that appears. Drag down the row or across the column as far as you need. 

Creating a growth trend is easy too. This is where cells increase by a discrete rate of growth. To do this magic, you want to enter in the first two cells with information. Excel will detect a pattern. Then, drag the bottom corner of the cell as far as you need and select “growth trend” when given the chance. 

Rows and Columns

The rows and columns that you work with can be adjusted to suit your needs. In fact, you can insert or delete any number of them, including cells. You can right click the header for any particular row or column and choose insert/delete. You can also highlight any number of cells, rows, or columns and hit the delete button. When you insert a row, all other rows get pushed down and renumbered. The same happens with columns. When you insert a column, the other columns get pushed to the right. Conversely, when rows or columns get deleted, everything gets moved up or to the left. 

If anything contains sensitive data, it can be hidden. Highlight the rows or columns that you want to hide, right click the selection, and choose hide. 

Conclusion

In this section, we talked about the various activities you can do with Excel sheets. Then, we talked about a few shortcuts that help with your productivity. Practicing and using Excel every day will make you very competent.