HACK

Create a Personal View of Your Workbooks

H A C K

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Create a Personal View of Your Workbooks

Hack #1

Excel enables you to have multiple workbooks showing simultaneously, and

to have a customized view of your workbooks arranged in different windows.
Then you can save your view workspaces as .xlw files and use them when it
suits you.

Sometimes when working in Excel, you might need to have more than one
workbook open on your screen to make it easier to use or view data from
multiple workbooks. The next few paragraphs describe how to do this in a
neat and organized way.
First, open all the workbooks you will need.
To open more than one workbook at a time, select the Office
button Open, press the Ctrl key (c key on the Mac)
while selecting the workbooks you want to open, and then
click Open (pre-2007, select File Open).

From any of the workbooks (it doesnt matter which one), select Windows
View Arrange All (pre-2007, select Window Arrange). If Windows
of active workbook is checked, uncheck it, and then select the window
arrangement you prefer and click OK.
If you select Tiled, you will be presented with your workbooks in a tiled
fashion, as shown with blank workbooks in Figure 1-1.
Selecting Horizontal gives you a view of your workbooks in a single stack,
one on top of the other, as in Figure 1-2.
Checking the Vertical option will place all your open workbooks side by
side, as shown in Figure 1-3.
Finally, as shown in Figure 1-4, selecting the Cascade option will layer all
open workbooks one on top of the other.
Once your workbooks are displayed in your preferred view, you can easily
move data between them (e.g., copy, paste, drag and drop).
If you think you might want to return to a view you created, you can save
this preferred view as a workspace. To save a workspace, simply select Windows Save Workspace (pre-2007, File Save Workspace), enter the
workspaces filename in the File Name box, and click OK. When saving
your workspace, the file extension will be .xlw rather than the standard .xlsx
of Excel 2007. To restore your Excel workspace to one full window of a particular workbook, just double-click the title bar (on the Mac, click the green

Chapter 1, Reducing Workbook and Worksheet Frustration

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