How to Select / Jump / Go to a Specific Sheet Directly in an Excel workbook – Excel Efficiency Tip

The other day I went to meet my Friends who recently joined as a data analyst. By the time I reached his home he was with his laptop and was working on some project. He has an excel file with Multiple sheets (close to 30) and he is working with formulae to navigate across multiple sheets to complete his assignment. At times the selection of wrong sheet forced him to rewrite the formula/ do the work again. In no time he got frustrated and took a break from his work. During our discussion he asked me if there is any way/ shortcut to go to a specific sheet directly instead of navigating sheets one by one.

The answer from me is Yes. In this post let us see how go to a Specific Sheet Directly and different ways of doing that.

Suggested Read : In earlier posts we have seen few tips while working with multiple sheets/ workbooks. Refer to the below posts in case if you missed out on these.

• How to do the same action across multiple sheets.
• Opening the same instance of Excel file in multiple windows.
• Closing multiple files (from Excel 2013).

How to Jump/ Go to a specific sheet

This can be done in multiple ways.

• Using Right Click.
• Using Go To Dialog box.

The applicability of these depends on how many number of sheets you have in the work book. Choose the best method that suits your requirement.

Using GoTo Dialog box

To Activate the GoTo dialog box, press F5 key in the active sheet.

A window with name “Go To” opens.

In the Reference box enter “Sheetname!A1” (For ex: sheet10!A1 to go to sheet 10) and hit enter/OK. This takes you to the specific sheet.

See the below screenshot to understand how to use Go To box to navigate to a sheet.

Using Right Click to go to a specific sheet

To the left in the line of sheet names you can find two navigation buttons. You would have used them to move to next/ previous sheets.

Right Click on any of these buttons.

You can see a window open with name “Activate” listing all the sheets in your work book.

Select the sheet which you want to go to and click on OK. You will go to that sheet.

See the below screenshot to understand. In the below example I have 34 sheets and I want to go to sheet 7. I just right click on navigation button and select sheet7 from the window and click on OK.

Points to Remember when using Right Click

Two things to keep in mind while using this method

• If you are using Excel version of 2010 or earlier, the activate window displays only the first 15 sheets. You need to click on “More Sheets”. This brings up the window listing all sheets in your work book. Excel version 2013 and later lists all then sheets at one go.
• In Excel 2010 or earlier versions you can’t navigate across sheets by typing sheet name. However, Excel version 2013 and later allows you to type the sheet name in the activate window. (See the below screen shot to understand).

Do you use these methods to go to specific sheet directly ?

Please do share if you are aware of any other ways for the same using the comment box below.

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