How to Add a New Tab in Microsoft Excel: Your Ultimate Guide

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Easy and quick ways to create new tabs in Excel

Written by Hannah Dillon

Last Updated: February 25, 2025 Fact Checked

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Adding a Single Sheet

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Adding Multiple Sheets

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Inserting a Sheet Template

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Video

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Q&A

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Tips

You can add tabs in Excel, called "Worksheets," to keep your data separate but easy to access and reference. Excel starts you with one sheet (three if you're using 2007), but you can add as many additional sheets as you'd like.

Quick Steps

Open your document in Microsoft Excel.
Click on the "+" button at the bottom of the screen, next to your current sheet tab.
Double click the sheet tab to rename it.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Adding a Single Sheet

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Start up Excel from the Start menu (Windows) or the Applications folder (Mac) and open the workbook you want to add tabs to. You'll be prompted to select a file when you launch Excel.
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Click the "+" button at the end of your sheet tabs. This will create a new blank sheet after your existing sheets.^{[1]
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- You can also press ⇧ Shift+F11 to create a new sheet in front of the selected sheet. For example, if you have Sheet1 selected and then press ⇧ Shift+F11, a new sheet called Sheet2 will be created in front of Sheet1.
- On Mac, press ⌘ Command+T to create a new tab.
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3
Create a copy of an existing sheet. You can quickly copy a sheet (or sheets) by selecting it, holding Ctrl (Windows) or ⌥ Opt (Mac), and then dragging the sheet. This will create a new copy that contains all of the data from the original.^{[2]
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- Press and hold Ctrl/⌥ Opt and click multiple sheets to select them if you want to copy more than one sheet at once.
The text will become highlighted, and you can type whatever you'd like as the tab name.
You can select from a variety of preset colors, or click "More Colors" to make a custom color.
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Change the number of default sheets for new workbooks. You can adjust Excel's settings to change the number of sheets that appear by default whenever a new workbook is created.
- Click the File tab or Office button and select "Options."
- In the "General" or "Popular" tab, find the "When creating new workbooks" section.
- Change the number for "Include this many sheets."
Once you have multiple tabs, you can click and drag them to change the order that they appear. Drag the tab left or right to put it in a new position in your tab row. This will not affect any of your formulas or references.

Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Adding Multiple Sheets

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⇧ Shift and select the number of sheets you want to create. For example, if you want to add three sheets at once, hold ⇧ Shift and select three existing sheets. In other words, you'll need to already have three sheets to quickly create three new sheets using this command.
This will open additional Insert options. Be sure to click the ▼ part of the button so that you open the menu.
This will create new blank sheets based on the number of sheets you had selected. They will be inserted before the first sheet in your selection.

Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Inserting a Sheet Template

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You can turn any of your worksheets into templates by selecting the "Excel Template (*.xltx)" format when you save the file. This will save the current spreadsheet into your Templates directory. You can also download a variety of templates from Microsoft when creating a new file.
When you insert a template as a sheet, it will be added in front of the tab you have selected.
This will open a new window allowing you to select what you want to insert.
Your downloaded and saved templates will be listed in the "General" tab. Select the template you want to use and click "OK."
Your new tab (or tabs if the template had more than one sheet) will be inserted in front of the tab you had selected.

Community Q&A

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Question

How do I name a file in Excel?

Community Answer

Go to the file tab on the top left hand side and then click on save as and name the file.

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Question

How can I change the position of a tab?

Community Answer

Click and drag the tab you want to move to the position you want it moved to.

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How do I add a row in my Excel spreadsheet?

Community Answer

You need to right click the area on the left side where you want the additional row. Then, you can click "add row."

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Tips

You can apply changes to several tabs at once by grouping them. Hold the Ctrl key while clicking each tab to create a group. Select a contiguous range of sheets by holding the Shift key while clicking the first and last tabs in the range of sheets. Release the Ctrl and Shift keys and click any other tab to ungroup the sheets.

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It is easier to manage your tabs by giving them a distinctive name- it could be a month, a number, or something unique so that it describes what exactly is in the tab.

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