Master efficient ways to manage and arrange multiple Excel windows within your Windows operating system. Learn practical keyboard shortcuts and quick commands to enhance multitasking in Excel.
Key Insights
- Use the "New Window" option under Excel's View tab to clone existing worksheets, allowing simultaneous viewing and comparison of multiple sheets within the same workbook.
- The "Arrange All" feature provides four layout options—vertical, horizontal, cascade, and tiled—to quickly organize workbook windows without manual resizing.
- Keyboard shortcuts, like Windows key plus arrow keys and Ctrl + Tab, streamline window positioning and switching between multiple Excel windows, enhancing workflow efficiency.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this section, we're going to talk about how to work with windows inside of the Windows operating system. This particular topic is not applicable to Macs. So you can use several keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your Windows, and you can also use certain commands in Windows to arrange and position your windows into different configurations that we’re going to go over right now.
For instance, I’m going to go to this sheet and click on the New Worksheet button. I have a new sheet here. I might want to compare information in this sheet with information in the original sheet.
I’m not going to be able to do that inside of one workbook, no matter how fast I click on either sheet. So, I might decide to open a new window. Now, just to show you that it’s going to be the same window within the same workbook, what I’m going to do is say, New Window, and I’ll make this really bold and large.
Now we know this is a new window in the same workbook. What I could do is go over to the View tab and choose New Window. What this does is clone the existing worksheet.
This is the second window, and if I restore this, you’ll see my original window right here. What this allows me to do is click on another tab and view two worksheets within the same workbook. Now, I might want to arrange these windows because I may not like this arrangement.
I want the windows side by side. I don’t have to manually adjust them or arrange them. What I can do is simply go over to the View tab and choose Arrange All.
I have four different ways to arrange my workbooks. I can choose to arrange them vertically, side by side. One click on vertical, click OK, they’re vertically side by side.
I could choose to arrange them all horizontally, one on top of another. So this is a landscape version of arranging all. I could click Arrange All and choose to Cascade.
If I choose Cascade, I see the most of each window, but I can still view the other window by clicking outside my current sheet. Well, how do I get back to the sheet I was just looking at? Just go a little bit outside over to the right, a little outside over on top. Now, let’s say I create two additional windows.
I’ll use a keyboard shortcut to do that, CTRL+N, CTRL+N. I could go to View and choose Arrange All, and the one option we haven’t looked at is Tiled. And if I select that and click OK, now my windows are arranged as if they’re bathroom tiles. That’s the analogy I’m using.
Alright, so now I’m going to close that additional workbook as well. Again, it’s the same workbook. If I click on this tab and start typing, it’s the same workbook, and any edits I make in that sheet apply to the original.
I’ll just close that additional workbook now. Now, I want to arrange these windows side by side, but I just want to use keyboard shortcuts for this.
This is the window that’s currently in the front. If I want this window to take up half the screen, I can press the Windows key, then the right arrow key, and it will take up half the screen. Microsoft will now show me the other available windows.
Since I’m doing a recording, it’s showing me the software I’m using to record this video. But the other window that I want to take up the second half of the screen is the Excel spreadsheet here. I’ll press ENTER.
If I want that window that I just selected to take up the whole screen, I’ll use the Windows key, up arrow. Now, it’s taking up a quarter of the screen because there’s another screen that could take up the other quarter down there, but I want it in full-screen, so I’ll press the Windows key, up arrow again. Let me just flip back to the original window.
Windows key, up arrow. If I wanted to restore down, Windows key, down arrow, and if I want to minimize all the way down, press Windows key + down arrow again.
If I want to bring it back, I’ll press ALT, Tab. ALT and Tab allows you to cycle through the numerous open windows. But if you do it quickly, you can go back and forth between any two windows.
So, ALT, Tab, ALT, Tab, ALT, Tab, ALT, Tab. Let’s say I go to my Camtasia window and select that. If I just want to flip back between the Excel spreadsheets, the keyboard shortcuts I can use are CTRL+Tab.
This will only switch between the two open Excel windows or however many windows you have open in Excel. I want to control the positioning of this window. I can press the Windows key, left arrow. It will take up the left half, and Windows key, right arrow.
We’ll move it towards the middle and Windows key, right arrow, moves it over to the right side. Then I get to pick the other window I want to take. I’ll use the blank Excel spreadsheet. I’ll press ENTER, and I just switched the positions of the windows.
These are quick little keyboard shortcuts you can use to navigate and manage windows inside of Excel.