CHAPTER 2 ■ NAVIGATING AND WORKING WITH WORKSHEETS

■ Note If you are entering data in a selected range, the active cell stays within that range when you press the
Enter key or the Tab key.

6. Enter A8:C10 in the Name Box and then press Enter.

7. It is usually better to enter data across in rows because you can tab across to the next
cell. When you get to the last cell, press Enter to go to the next row automatically. If
you prefer to enter data going down one column and then to the next column, you can
select a range of cells and press the Enter key after each cell entry.
a. Type car in cell A8. Press the Enter key.
b. Type van. Press the Enter key.
c. Type truck. Press the Enter key.
d. Type semi. Press the Enter key.
e. Type bus. Press the Enter key.
f. Type bike. Press the Enter key.
g. Type trike. Press the Enter key.
h. Type train. Press the Enter key.
i. Type skates. Press the Enter key. You now are back at cell A8.
8. Reenter the data you entered in each step except this time press the Tab key after
each entry.

In this section you learned how to select cells using their cell reference. Next, you’ll be learning to use
the Go To feature to move rapidly to individual cells. This function becomes increasingly important when
worksheets become very large over time. When your worksheet contains extensive data, you have to be able
to make quick jumps to work efficiently.

Going Directly to Any Cell

Excel provides two methods for jumping directly to any cell. One way is to type the cell address into the
Name box and press Enter. Another way is to use the Go To feature.
Entering the cell address in the Name box is the quicker method, but the Go To feature has the benefit
in that it stores the cells that you jumped to previously making it easy to jump back and forth between cells.
The Go To feature can be accessed by clicking the Home tab and then, in the Editing group, click the Find
& Select arrow to see the drop-down menu. See Figure 2-8. The shortcut for this feature is pressing Ctrl + G.

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CHAPTER 2 ■ NAVIGATING AND WORKING WITH WORKSHEETS

Figure 2-8. Select Go To from the Find & Select button

Selecting the Go To… option brings up the Go To dialog box. See Figure 2-9.

Figure 2-9. Go To dialog box

To jump to a particular cell, you would type the cell address for the cell you want to go to in the Reference
area, and then press Enter or Click the OK button. Next, you learn how to work with worksheets. You will learn
how to select them, rearrange them, and change their tab colors—as well as adding, deleting, and hiding them.

Worksheets
Spreadsheets in Excel are referred to as worksheets. Individual worksheets are stored together in a workbook.
When you save your work in Excel you do not save individual worksheets; rather, you save the workbook.
Data entered in one worksheet can be entered into other worksheets at the same time. Data can be passed
between worksheets. Data can also be imported into worksheets from other workbooks or other sources.
A workbook can consist of one or more worksheets. The tabs for these worksheets appear at the bottom
left-hand corner of the screen. Clicking a sheet tab makes that sheet the current worksheet. The current tab
can be easily identified because its tab text is bolded and has a thick line below the text.

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Figure 2-10. Worksheet tabs

In addition to adding and formatting data, following are some of the ways to manipulate worksheets:
• Rename them
• Add or Remove them
• Hide and Unhide them
• Reorder them
• Copy them to the same workbook
• Copy or Move them to another workbook

Naming Worksheets
If you add a second worksheet it would be named Sheet2 by default. If you add a third worksheet it would be
named Sheet3 by default, and so on. These names are not helpful because they don’t provide any clue as to
what is on the worksheet, but fortunately you can rename them to something more meaningful.
There are two ways to rename a worksheet :
• Right-click a sheet tab and select Rename. This will highlight the tab you right-
clicked (see Figure 2-11a) and put the tab text in edit mode in which you can type
over the current text.(see Figure 2-11b).
• Double-clicking a sheet tab will also put the tab text in edit mode.

Figure 2-11. a) The tab name is in Edit mode, and b) the tab has been renamed

Adding and Removing Worksheets

You can add new worksheets to your workbooks or remove them.
Worksheets can be added by doing one of the following.

• Clicking the New Sheet button . Clicking the New Sheet button adds the new
worksheet after the currently selected worksheet.
• Right-click a worksheet tab and select Insert, which displays the Insert dialog box
(see Figure 2-12). Select Worksheet and click OK to add a blank worksheet.

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Figure 2-12. Select Worksheet from the Insert dialog box to add a blank worksheet

You also can use add a prebuilt worksheet known as a template. Click Spreadsheet Solutions to see the
available templates (see Figure 2-13). There are some very nice templates available on the Spreadsheets
Solution tab. There is a Blood Pressure Tracker, a Personal Monthly Budget template, a Loan Amortization
template, and so on. Click a template to view it in the Preview area. Double-clicking one of these templates
adds it as a worksheet in your workbook.

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Figure 2-13. Available templates

A worksheet can be removed by right-clicking its tab and selecting Delete.

Changing a Worksheet Tab Color

You can make the different tabs easily distinguishable by making them different colors. You can change
the background color of each tab by right-clicking a tab, selecting Tab Color, and then selecting a color.
See Figure 2-14.

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