Excel 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

2017-07-07 02:10:07

Worksheets and Workbooks

Find and Replace

Spell Check

So far in this book you've seen how to create and format a basic table of data. That's great for getting started, but as power users, professional accountants, and other Excel jockeys quickly learn, some of the most compelling reasons to use Excel involve multiple tables that share information and interact with each other.

For example, say you want to track the performance of your company: you create one table summarizing your firm's yearly sales, another listing expenses, and a third analyzing profitability and making predictions for the coming year. If you create these tables in different spreadsheet files, you have to copy shared information from one location to another, all without misplacing a number or making a mistake. And what's worse, with data scattered in multiple places, you're missing the chance to use some of Excel's niftiest charting and analytical tools.

On the other hand, if you try cramming a bunch of tables onto the same worksheet page, as shown in Figure 5-1, you can quickly create formatting and cell management problems. Not only do you have to be careful to avoid overlapping data, but if you stack tables on top of each other and then discover you need to add more data to the first table, you have to move the second table. And when you combine multiple tables in a single worksheet, you also have trouble properly resizing or formatting columns, because each column contains data from a different table. Putting tables side by side, separated by a blank column is a somewhat better choice, but it can create problems if you need to add more columns to the first table.

Note: To add new rows and columns and move the rest of your data out of the way, you can use the Insert Rows and Insert Columns commands. But most Excel masters agree that using separate worksheets, described in the next section, for each large table you create is a better solution.

Fortunately, you don't have to keep your data scattered across multiple spreadsheet filesand you don't have to try to make one worksheet do double-duty, either. Excel offers the perfect solution: it lets you create spreadsheets with multiple pages of data, each of which can conveniently exchange information with other pages. Each page is called a worksheet, and a collection of one or more worksheets is called a workbook (which is also sometimes called a spreadsheet file). In this chapter, you'll learn how to manage worksheets and workbooks. You'll also take a look at two more all-purpose Excel features: find and replace (a tool for digging through worksheets in search of specific data) and the spell checker.

Figure 5-1. Stacking tables on top of each otheror side by side, separated by a blank columnis usually a bad idea. If you need to add more data to the first table, you have to move the other tables. The answer? Create separate worksheets, one per table.

Figure 5-1. Stacking tables on top of each otheror side by side, separated by a blank columnis usually a bad idea. If you need to add more data to the first table, you have to move the other tables. The answer? Create separate worksheets, one per table.

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