I work with Excel so often that I forget that things I do all the time and take for granted may not be widely known or used. Today is yet another example. While working on a client spreadsheet I did something that made my client exclaim and stop me mid-stream to show him what I had done.
We were working on multiple sheets in a workbook - actually it was his Paypal transactions and we were preparing sheets for each month. He had already started the sheets and I was putting in place some automation. However, when he set up the sheets, he had not copied over the header for the first line (each sheet were little mini databases of info). Also, we needed to hide some of the columns we didn't want.
What I did was my trick for today's post. First I copied into the clipboard the column headers from the first sheet. Next, at the bottom of the workbook, I highlighted all the spreadsheet tabs by clicking while holding the CTRL key so that all the spreadsheets were "selected."
Next I moved to the second spreadsheet tab, went to the first line, right clicked and clicked on Insert Copied cells. Next, I hid the columns I didn't need, expanded the ones we wanted larger, changed the font to larger size and then clicked down on the bottom to "deselect" the other spreadsheets. I then went to each spreadsheet to make sure everything I had done was the same on the other sheets.
You can use the same technique to add in column headers if they were not there in the first place. Selecting all the tabs at the bottom means that whatever format changes you make will apply to all the selected sheets.
Sometimes, being lazy or very busy makes you learn shortcuts and tricks. My client said this one little trick was worth the whole consulting day. Gotta love it.