will introduce you to the exciting new pivot table features in Excel 2007. Create quick summaries and pivot charts, add impact with traffic light icons, design calculated fields, group dates and numbers.
Create a Table of Contents in Excel
In an Excel file with lots of worksheets, how do you help users navigate through the workbook? Here are a few of the methods I’ve used. I’m sure you’ve found your own creative ways to deal with the problem, and I’d be interested in hearing about them.
Create a Workbook Menu
You can use programming to create a special menu with a list of sheets. Add the menu to the menu bar when the workbook opens, and remove the menu when the workbook closes. John Walkenbach has a nice example of an Excel menu maker.
Add a Drop Down List of Sheets
Another option is to install an add-in that lists all the sheets in the active workbook, in a toolbar dropdown list. Dave Peterson created a Navigation Toolbar for Excel 2003.
Ron de Bruin adapted the code to create a Navigation Command for Excel 2007.
Create List of Hyperlinks
A non-programming option is to create a list of sheets on a worksheet, then change each sheet name into a hyperlink.
- Click on a cell that contains a sheet name.
- On Excel’s Ribbon, click the Insert tab (In Excel 2003, click the Insert Menu.)
- Click Hyperlink, to open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.
- In the Link To list, click on Place in This Document
- In the list of places in the document, click on a sheet name, then click OK.
It will take you a few minutes to set up all the hyperlinks in a large Excel workbook, but they’ll make it easy to navigate through the sheets.
If you have a copy of the Power Utility Pak you can use it to create a table of contents, with either a list of hyperlinks or a set of navigation button.
Based on sample code from Sam and Andrew in the reader comments below, I’ve posted an Excel Table of Contents workbook in which you can create a popup list or or a list with sheet hyperlinks.
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December 17th, 2008 at 1:22 am
You left out my favorite, built-in method: Right-click on the transport controls to the left of the sheet tabs. Granted, that won’t work as well if you have more than 19 worksheets, but it works great for my needs.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Tim, thanks for mentioning that technique. I like it too, and the workbook that I’m working with now has too many sheet to fit in that list.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Debra, the problem is that you do REAL work. I’m an academic.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:31 am
I have the below macro assigned to a shortcut key - Ctrl+q
It shows a very interesting thing….
The behaviour of SendKeys is different not only between 2003 and 2007 but also between XP and VISTA….
Sub Sheet_Index()
If Application.CommandBars(”workbook tabs”).Controls(16).Caption Like “More Sheets*” Then
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
If WINDOWS_VER > 5 Then
If Application.Version = “12.0″ Then
Application.SendKeys “{end}~”
Application.CommandBars(”workbook tabs”).ShowPopup
Else
Application.SendKeys “{end}~”
Application.CommandBars(”workbook tabs”).Controls(16).Execute
End If
Else
Application.SendKeys “{end}~”
Application.CommandBars(”workbook tabs”).ShowPopup
End If
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Else
Application.CommandBars(”workbook tabs”).ShowPopup
End If
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
Public Type OSVERSIONINFO
dwOSVersionInfoSize As Long
dwMajorVersion As Long
dwMinorVersion As Long
dwBuildNumber As Long
dwPlatformId As Long
szCSDVersion As String * 128
End Type
Public Declare Function apiGetVersionEx Lib “kernel32″ _
Alias “GetVersionExA” _
(lpVersionInformation As Any) _
As Long
Public Const VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_WINDOWS = 1
Public Const VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT = 2
Public WINDOWS_VER
Sub WinVer()
Dim osvi As OSVERSIONINFO
Dim strOut As String
osvi.dwOSVersionInfoSize = Len(osvi)
If CBool(apiGetVersionEx(osvi)) Then
With osvi
‘ Win 2000
If .dwMajorVersion > 5 Then
WINDOWS_VER = 6
End If
End With
End If
End Sub
December 18th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Below is a macro that creates a Table of Contents sheet and puts a hyperlink to every sheet that isn’t hidden and is not the current sheet.
The links do not work for sheets that are graphs and I do not know how to either make them work or test that they are graphs and not include them. If anyone knows how, let me know.
Sub CreateTableOfContents()
Dim shtName As String
Dim shtLink As String
Dim rowNum As Integer
Dim newSht As Worksheet
Set newSht = Sheets.Add
newSht.Name = “Table Of Contents”
newSht.Select
newSht.Range(”A1″).Value = “Table of Contents”
rowNum = 2
For i = 1 To Sheets.Count
‘Does not create a link if the Sheet isn’t visible or the sheet is the current sheet
If Sheets(i).Visible = True And Sheets(i).Name ActiveSheet.Name Then
shtName = Sheets(i).Name
shtLink = “‘” & shtName & “‘!A1″
newSht.Cells(rowNum, 1).Select
‘inserts the hyperlink to the sheet and cell A1
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Selection, Address:=”", SubAddress:= _
shtLink, TextToDisplay:=shtName
rowNum = rowNum + 1
End If
Next i
End Sub
December 18th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Thanks Sam and Andrew! WordPress changed all the quotes to curly quotes, which messes up the code, so I put your sample code in a file here: Create an Excel Table of Contents
December 19th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I found some code to test if a sheet is a chart or not at http://www.vbaexpress.com/kb/getarticle.php?kb_id=389
I modified my code to not link chart sheets as well:
Option Explicit
‘Sample code posted by Andrew
‘http://blog.contextures.com/archives/2008/12/17/create-a-table-of-contents-in-excel/#comment-1267
Sub CreateTableOfContents()
‘Below is a macro that creates a Table of Contents sheet and
‘puts a hyperlink to every sheet that isn’t hidden and is not the current sheet.
‘The links do not work for sheets that are graphs and I do not know
‘how to either make them work or test that they are graphs and not include them.
Dim shtName As String
Dim shtLink As String
Dim rowNum As Integer
Dim newSht As Worksheet
Dim i As Long
Set newSht = Sheets.Add
newSht.Name = “Table Of Contents”
newSht.Select
newSht.Range(”A1″).Value = “Table of Contents”
rowNum = 2
For i = 1 To Sheets.Count
‘Does not create a link if the Sheet isn’t visible or the sheet is the current sheet
If Sheets(i).Visible = True And Sheets(i).Name ActiveSheet.Name And IsSheet(Sheets(i).Name) Then
shtName = Sheets(i).Name
shtLink = “‘” & shtName & “‘!A1″
newSht.Cells(rowNum, 1).Select
‘inserts the hyperlink to the sheet and cell A1
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Selection, Address:=”", SubAddress:= _
shtLink, TextToDisplay:=shtName
rowNum = rowNum + 1
End If
Next i
End Sub
Public Function IsSheet(cName As String) As Boolean
Dim tmpChart As Chart
On Error Resume Next
Set tmpChart = Charts(cName)
On Error GoTo 0
IsSheet = IIf(tmpChart Is Nothing, True, False)
End Function
December 20th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Thanks Andrew — I updated the sample file.
January 5th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Hi guys!
Great code in the comments here..
@Sam: thanks for the very neat trick, never thought of using the “workbook tabs” popup in this way, definitively going to use this
@Andrew: if you loop through the Worksheets collection (instead of the Sheets collection) there is no need to test if the Sheet is a chart or not..
Also you should refrain from using the ActiveSheet object. You’ve already declared a object variable (newSht) use this instead, this way your code will be explicit and more robust..
As a small tip, I would also suggest to implement a check as to whether a worksheet named “Table of Contents” already exists, optionally replacing this worksheet. The way you’ve written the procedure now, it fails if you run it more than once..
May 27th, 2009 at 12:04 am
[...] created a table of contents based on sheet names, in other workbooks, but hadn’t tried to index a sheet’s contents. In this case, all the [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 5:35 am
There’s a similar blog entry from April 2009 at http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2009/04/22/previous-sheets-stack/ that has some ideas re this to. I posted an idea of my own there, which I’ve copied below:
You could store often-used sheets as custom views, and then use the custom views dialog box to select them (which can be done without the use of the mouse if you like). An added bonus is that you can then save multiple views of the same spreadsheet in the case that you’ve filtered or hidden rows. For instance, in a workbook I use, I have a ‘Customer information’ customer view, and then have ‘Customer info - customer x’ view for any specific customers I might want to check on often.
The downside is that this can be slow, as it not only takes you to the sheet concerned, but then does a whole heap of filtering/unfiltering…even if none is needed.
Sometimes I also use named ranges for navigation. I start any functionality-based named ranges with ZZ_ so that they appear at the bottom of the list.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Thanks Jeffrey, interesting ideas.
August 25th, 2009 at 5:55 am
Thanks for all the excellent tips. If you also make the ‘Web’ toolbar visible, you can use the ‘Back’ button to jump back to the Table of Contents after hyperlinking off to another sheet (also works in Word with any internal TOC or crossreference links).
November 4th, 2009 at 1:02 am
[...] a year ago, we talked about creating a table of contents sheet in Excel. In that post, one of the suggestions was to type a list of sheets on a worksheet, then change each [...]