How to insert and delete worksheets

In this lesson, we'll look at how to insert and delete worksheets in an Excel workbook.

Let's take a look.

The easiest way to add a new worksheet to a workbook is to click the Insert Worksheet tab that sits to the right of the last tab in the workbook.

When you click this button, Excel will immediately add a new worksheet to the workbook to the right of the last worksheet. No matter which tab is selected, the new worksheet goes to the end of the list.

Note that there is a keyboard shortcut for adding a new worksheet: Shift F11.

Another way to add a new worksheet is to select Insert Sheet, from the Insert menu, on the home tab of the ribbon.

This command always inserts new worksheets to the left of the currently selected worksheet.

You can add as many worksheets to a workbook as you like. The number of worksheets is limited only by available memory.

When you add a lot of worksheets to a workbook, you might want to adjust the area available to display tabs. You can do this by grabbing the small handle to the right of the tab display area. Once the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow, just click and drag to resize.

You can also navigate tabs using the controls to the left. You can use the arrow keys, or you can right-click these controls to display a list of tabs, and then select the tab you'd like to move to.

To delete a worksheet, just right-click the tab and choose Delete from the menu. Holding down the control key, you can select more than one tab at a time. Then, you can delete all selected worksheets in one step.

You can also delete worksheets using the Delete menu on the home tab of the ribbon. Choose Delete Sheet from the menu.

Note that there is no undo for deleted sheets. When you delete a worksheet, it's permanent, so be careful.

If you've accidentally deleted a sheet, but have saved your workbook recently, you might want to close the file and re-open the saved workbook.