Page 271 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

Reorganizing the Workbook 253
Group editing
One of the nice things about a workbook is that it enables you to edit more than one worksheet at a time. Of course, you should be concerned with group editing only when you’re working on a bunch of worksheets that share essentially the same layout and require the same type of formatting.
For example, suppose that you have a workbook that contains annual sales worksheets (named YTD10, YTD11, and YTD12) for three consecutive years. The worksheets share the same layout (with months across the columns and quarterly and annual totals, locations, and types of sales down the rows) but lack standard formatting.
To format any part of these three worksheets in a single operation, you simply resort to group editing, which requires selecting the three sales worksheets. Simply click the YTD10, YTD11, and YTD12 sheet tabs as you hold down the Ctrl key, or you can click the YTD10 tab and then hold down the Shift key as you click the YTD12 tab.
After you select the last sheet, the message [Group] appears in the title bar of the active document window (with the YTD10 worksheet, in this case).
The [Group] indicator lets you know that any editing change you make to the current worksheet will affect all the sheets that are currently selected. For example, if you select a row of column headings and add bold and italics to the headings in the current worksheet, the same formatting is applied to the same cell selection in all three sales sheets. All headings in the same cell range in the other worksheets are now in bold and italics. Keep in mind that you can apply not only formatting changes to a cell range, but also editing changes, such as replacing a cell entry, deleting a cell’s contents, or moving a cell selection to a new place in the worksheet. These changes also affect all the worksheets you have selected as long as they’re grouped together.
After you are finished making editing changes that affect all the grouped worksheets, you can break up the group by right-clicking one of the sheet tabs and then choosing Ungroup Sheets at the top of the shortcut menu. As soon as you break up the group, the [Group] indicator disappears from the title bar, and thereafter, any editing changes that you make affect only the cells in the active worksheet.
To select all the worksheets in the workbook for group editing in one opera- tion, right-click the tab of the sheet where you want to make the editing changes that affect all the other sheets, and then choose Select All Sheets from its shortcut menu.
Book II Chapter 4
Managing Worksheets