Page 270 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

252 Reorganizing the Workbook
If you find that a single worksheet’s just never seems sufficient for the kind of spreadsheets you normally create, you can change the default number of sheets that are automatically available in all new workbook files that you open. To do this, open the General tab of the Excel Options dialog box (File➪Options or Alt+FT), and then enter a number in the Include This Many Sheets text box or select the number with the spinner buttons (from 2 up to a maximum of 255). You can’t go lower than 1 because a workbook with no worksheet is no workbook at all.
To remove a worksheet, make the sheet active and then click the drop-down button attached to the Delete button on the Home tab of the Ribbon and choose Delete Sheet from its drop-down menu — you can also press Alt+HDS or right-click its tab and then choose Delete from its shortcut menu. If Excel detects that the worksheet contains some data, the program then displays an alert dialog box cautioning you that data may exist in the worksheet you’re just about to zap. To go ahead and delete the sheet (data and all), you click the Delete button. To preserve the worksheet, click Cancel or press the Escape key.
Deleting a sheet is one of those actions that you can’t undo with the Undo button on the Quick Access toolbar. This means that after you click the Delete button, you’ve kissed your worksheet goodbye, so please don’t do this unless you’re certain that you aren’t dumping needed data. Also, keep
in mind that you can’t delete a worksheet if that sheet is the only one in the workbook until you’ve inserted another blank worksheet: Excel won’t allow a workbook file to be completely sheetless.
Changing the sheets
Excel makes it easy to rearrange the order of the sheets in your workbook. To move a sheet, click its sheet tab and drag it to the new position in the row of tabs. As you drag, the pointer changes shape to an arrowhead on a dog-eared piece of paper, and you see a black triangle pointing downward above the sheet tabs. When this triangle is positioned over the tab of the sheet that is to follow the one you’re moving, release the mouse button.
If you need to copy a worksheet to another position in the workbook, hold down the Ctrl key as you click and drag the sheet tab. When you release the mouse button, Excel creates a copy with a new sheet tab name based on the number of the copy and the original sheet name. For example, if you copy Sheet1 to a new place in the workbook, the copy is renamed Sheet1 (2). You can then rename the worksheet whatever you want.
You can also rearrange the sheets in your workbook using the Move or Copy dialog box opened by right-clicking a sheet tab and then choosing the Move or Copy command from the shortcut menu. Then, click the name of the worksheet that you want the currently active worksheet to now precede in the Before Sheet list box and selecting OK.