What Is A WorkBook ? – What is a WorkSheet ?

What Is A WorkBook ? – What is a WorkSheet ?

The terms WorkBook and WorkSheet mystify new users of Excel. Let’s have a look through “The WayBack Machine”.

I just bought a beautiful bookkeeper’s ledger book. Each page has 14 columns. On each page of the bookkeeper’s ledger book I keep information about a different company – a separate Income or Expense account for each column… very tedious to do every month… for each company.

Now Let’s Have Some EXCEL Fun!

Open Excel and you will see a blank WorkBook.

The top left of the screen shows you the Book Number you are working with…This will change after you save this WorkBook under a new name. More about saving your WorkBook in another Tip.

At the left bottom of the screen you will see some directional arrows and then the indicators for Sheet1, Sheet2 and Sheet3. These sheets are the separate pages of your 14 column bookkeeper’s ledger book.

The Power of Excel will allow you to rename each Sheet, Insert many more Sheets and re-order them at will.

Of course The Power of Excel allows you to have many more columns than a 14-column ledger book and over 65,000 lines in each WorkSheet.

See my “How To Manage WorkSheets” Tip for more.

Centering Across Columns

Excel has a nifty feature that allows you to format your headings to look better on the printed page. You can center the contents of a cell so that it is spread across several columns. For instance, if the body of your worksheet is six columns wide, you can center your headings across all six columns. Applying this type of formatting is very easy:

1. In the left-most cell of the range in which you want the text centered, enter the text.

2. Select the range of cells across which you want the text centered.

3. Click on the Center Across Columns tool on the toolbar.