Grouping Excel worksheets

Working with multiple worksheets

Excel has a great feature that allows you to work in multiple worksheets simultaneously. This feature allows you to add content and/or format the contents in the multiple worksheet at the same time. Let's look at an example where this feature can be a great time saver.

Let's say you have a yearly budget for five years and the data for each year is placed in a separate worksheet. For each year the structure of data set, column heading and row heading are the same. It has cell formatting and number formatting consistent across all worksheets. Now let's say that you want to modify all 5 worksheet simultaneously. This is when the grouping worksheets become very useful. Instead of modifying one worksheet and then copying the changes to other worksheets, you can modify all worksheets at the same time. To do this first group the worksheets that you want edit simultaneously.

To group worksheets

To group worksheets together use one of the following methods:

• When "2016" worksheet is selected press shift key and click "2021". Now notice the there is a continuous line from 2016 worksheet tab to 2021 worksheet tab. Also note that the title bar now has the word "[Group]". This indicates that the worksheet has been grouped.

• To group worksheets that are not  adjacent to the current worksheet press and hold control key and click the worksheets tabs to need to group.

Now any changes to 2016 worksheet will affect all other worksheet in the group. Be careful now! any content in the same cell addresses in other worksheet in group will be overwritten.

To ungroup worksheets

To ungroup worksheets, right click on the worksheet tab and select ungroup