Part 3: Workbook Management

Excel workbooks often contain a large amount of data, and worksheets can quickly become overwhelming. When one worksheet becomes cumbersome, data can be broken out into smaller subsets and placed in separate worksheets within the same Excel file. Separating out spreadsheet data into smaller pieces can lead to better data organization within a file and increase its ease of use. When a retail company needs to track overall sales, as well as individual store sales, it makes sense to place each store’s sales data in a separate sheet within a file. Adding a summary sheet that sums across all the sheets will allow for total company sales data in the same file. This chapter will show how to set up a workbook to make multi-sheet formulas quick and easy.

Other examples of when multiple sheets make the most sense are when you are comparing regional data for a salesforce and wish to evaluate individual salesperson performance along with overall sales, and data over a period of time where sheets can be broken out by year or by month. When comparing data across several sheets, it is essential that all the sheets are laid out in the same way. To facilitate this, a template can be used. A template is the basic pattern for each new sheet that can be used repeatedly to make sure each new sheet has the same setup, formatting, formulas, etc. as the existing sheets in a file. In section, we will create examples from scratch to meet the specific needs of our work.