Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 14: advanced spreadsheeting 519

chapter

14

I

f you’ve mastered enough of Excel to input numbers, perform calculations, cre-

ate charts and graphs, and log your CD collection using the List Manager, then

congratulations—you already have far more spreadsheet ability than most people.

If, on the other hand, you’re the kind of person who uses Excel more than a word

processor, whose business depends on the flow of numbers, projections, and calcu-

lations, there’s still more to learn. This chapter covers the eerie realms of power

Excel, where several people can work on the same spreadsheet simultaneously over

the network, files can connect to databases or even the Web for their information,

and Excel can be programmed to function by itself.

Workbooks and Worksheets

A workbook is an individual Excel file that you save on your hard drive. Each work-

book is made up of one or more worksheets, which let you organize your data in lots

of complex and interesting ways. Try thinking of a workbook as a bound ledger with

multiple paper worksheets. Although most of the work you do is probably in an

individual sheet, it’s often useful to store several spreadsheets in a single workbook

document—for the convenience of linking multiple Excel worksheets.

Working with Multiple Worksheets

Although it doesn’t offer quite the heart-pounding excitement of, say, the List Man-

ager, managing the worksheets in a workbook is an important part of mastering

Excel. Here’s what you should know to get the most out of your sheets.

Advanced

Spreadsheeting

520 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

Tip: Several of the techniques described here involve selecting more than one worksheet. To do so, c-

click the tabs of the individual sheets you want—or click the first in a consecutive series, then Shift-click the

last.

• Adding sheets. Every Excel workbook starts out with three sheets, bearing the

inspired names Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. (You can set the number of sheets in

a new workbook in Excel→Preferences→General panel.)

To add a new sheet to your workbook, choose Insert→Worksheet, or Control-

click one of the tabs at the bottom of the worksheet and choose Insert from the

contextual menu. A new sheet appears to the left of the currently selected sheet,

and it’s named Sheet4 (or Sheet5, Sheet6, and so on).

Tip: To insert multiple sheets in one swift move, select the same number of sheet tabs that you want to

insert and then choose Insert→Worksheet. For example, to insert two new sheets, select Sheet1 and

Sheet2 by Shift-clicking both tabs, and then choose Insert→Worksheet. Excel then inserts Sheet4 and

Sheet5 (yes, to the left of Sheet1).

Workbooks and

Worksheets

Adding Background Pictures to Sheets

Every now and then, it’s easy to feel sorry for Microsoft

programmers; after umpteen revisions, what possible fea-

tures can they add to

Excel? They must rack

their brains, lying

awake at night, trying

to figure out what

else they can invent.

Surely, the ability to

add a graphics file as

a background image

behind your cell grid

is an idea that sprang

from just such a late-

night idea session.

Start by choosing

Format→Sheet→

Background. An

Open dialog box

pops up, in which you can choose the graphics file (JPEG,

GIF, Photoshop, and so on) that you want to use as a back-

ground. Once you’ve selected it and clicked Open, the im-

age loads as the spreadsheet’s background. If the image

isn’t large enough to fill the entire worksheet, Excel auto-

matically tiles it, placing copies side-by-side until every cen-

timeter of the win-

dow is filled.

Clearly, if this feature

is ever successful

in improving a

worksheet, it’s when

the background im-

age is extremely light

in color and low in

contrast. Most other

images succeed only

in rendering your

numbers and text

illegible.

If, after adding an

image to a sheet, you

decide that it makes things much, much worse, choose

Format→Sheet→Delete Background. Your normal white

Excel sheet background returns.

POWER USERS’ CLINIC