Microsoft Excel allows you to change the order of worksheets within a workbook at any time. There are two ways to do this, the first of which is simply to drag the tabs representing each worksheet to the left or right. Not only can you drag individual tabs, it is also possible to select several tabs and drag them all at the same time.
Not only can we move worksheets around within the same workbook, it is also possible to move worksheets from one workbook to another. For example, suppose you have a workbook containing a worksheet for each month of the year (“Jan”, “Feb”, etc.) and that we now want to split this into four smaller workbooks, one for each quarter: the first containing “Jan”, “Feb” and “Mar”; the second containing “Apr”, “May” and “Jun”; and so forth.
To minimise the number of sheets we will end up with in each workbook, we could begin by changing the default number of worksheets Excel will give us in each new workbook. To do this, we click on the Office Button and choose Excel Options. In the section that reads “When creating new workbooks Include This Many Sheets”, we change the number to one. We can then create four sheets by clicking four times on the new sheet icon on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Each of these new workbooks will have one sheet, which is the minimum that Excel will permit. We can activate each of these new workbooks by clicking on the View Tab and using the Switch Windows drop-down menu. The first way of moving worksheets from one workbook to another is the drag and drop technique. To use this method, we will need to see all of the workbooks simultaneously. Excel has a special command for making this happen. In the View Tab, simply click on the Arrange All button and choose “Tiled”. Excel will then display each of the workbooks in a small window, allowing us to view all of the open workbooks simultaneously.
The next step would be to select the three sheets pertaining to the first quarter: we click on “Jan”, hold down the Shift key and click on “Mar”. We can then drag the selected sheets across to the window of any of the new workbooks. We can then repeat this exact same procedure for the other quarters.
As was mentioned earlier, the minimum number of sheets which you can have in a workbook is one. Therefore, when we have moved the final three sheets, the window of the original workbook will simply disappear. Naturally though, the last saved version of the document will still exist.
The final step would be to delete the unwanted sheet from each of the four new workbooks. Having done this, to leave the split screen view and return to normal mode, we simply maximise any of the windows.
By the way, the second way of copying sheets from one workbook to another is to use the Move or Copy Sheets command. You will find this command in the Format drop-down menu in the Cells section of the Home Tab or by right-clicking on the selected sheet tabs. As well as moving sheets, this command also allows you to create a copy at another location.
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