I encourage my clients to organize their work in Excel workbooks by creating additional worksheets. Each worksheet should contain discrete information relating to your Excel project – e.g. Monthly or Quarterly budgets; Regional sales, or information about specific product lines.
A best practice is to rename each worksheet to reflect the information it contains. I also encourage clients to add a “Tab Color” to each worksheet. This makes it easy to identify the “Active” worksheet.
Many of my clients use 20 or more worksheets in their workbooks and they ask my help in navigating to a specific worksheet or cell range.
One strategy that I share with them is to create Hyperlinks to go to a specific worksheet. Another strategy involves naming specific cells or ranges. Once you have “named” a cell or a range, simply click the drop down arrow next to the Name box; select the named range and Excel takes you directly to that “Name.”
These are great time-savers and they boost productivity. Watch this video to see these techniques in action:
Here are the steps to follow in this Excel Video Lesson:
- Click a worksheet and then use Ctrl+Page Down to activate the next worksheet to the Right. Ctrl+Page Up activates the next worksheet to the Left.
- Create a new worksheet and give it a name like “Dashboard.” Type in text like “Link to XYZ Worksheet.”
- Ctrl+K opens the Create Hyperlink Dialog Box. Fist choose “Place in this Document.” Then select the name of the worksheet and click OK.
- The easiest way to “Name” a cell or a region is to highlight it and then go to the “Name Box” to type in a name. Names must begin with a letter and not use spaces. Click ENTER to register the name.
- Use the drop=down arrow next to the Name Box to find and go to a named cell or range. You can also create a hyperlink to a named cell or range.
