Let’s take a look. When you open a new workbook, or when you add new worksheets to an existing workbook, Excel uses a generic name for each sheet: Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3, and so on. As you build out a workbook to meet your needs, you’ll probably want to rename these sheets to keep things organized. The easiest way to rename a worksheet is to double-click its name. This will highlight the text of the name, and then you can type a new name. Press enter to confirm the change. You can also right-click on a worksheet and choose Rename from the menu. As before, Excel will highlight the text and you can type a new name. Once text is highlighted, you can click to move the cursor inside the text and edit as you like. You can also double-click to select individual words. There are a few rules to keep in mind when you rename tabs. Excel worksheet names need to be at least one character long, and they can’t be longer than 31 characters. You can’t have two worksheets with the same name in the same workbook. Certain characters are not allowed in worksheet names, including square brackets, asterisks, question marks, forward and backward slashes, periods, apostrophes, and colons. If you try to type these characters into a worksheet name, Excel will simply ignore the input. In addition to changing a worksheet’s name, you can also change the color of a worksheet tab. To change the color, just right-click and choose Tab Color from the menu. You can then choose a color of your choice. Note that you won’t see the color change until you click enter and select another worksheet.
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
