Change Your Tab Colors in Excel

After speaking with many people who use Microsoft Excel on a daily basis, most of them did not know that you can actually change the color of the tab.

The tabs are those items that distinguish worksheets within Excel. If you are not sure what a worksheet is then this article will more than likely be more advanced than what you need right now. I recommend checking out some sites on the basics of Excel before continuing.

Being able to color code your worksheet tabs can help you further organize your entire workbook making it easier to find information when you need it most. The steps are very simple.

You can do it a couple of ways. The first way which is what I find to be the easiest is to right click with your mouse on the tab that you want to change the color of. This will bring up what is called a pop up menu. In the pop up menu that is an option called "Tab Color". You'll never guess what that is for? OK maybe you will.

Click on the sub menu item labeled "Tab Color". This brings up a color palette where you can choose the color that you want. Select the color that you desire and then finally click the ok button.

At first glance it looks as if nothing has happened. However if you click off of that worksheet by left clicking a different tab, you will then see your new tab color. Just remember that a white tab always represents the active tab that you are working on.

The second way to change the tab color has a couple of more steps but the end result will still be the same. This is very typical of any Microsoft product which is the ability to do one thing in a variety of ways.

Up at the top of the Excel window you will see the main menu header. Click the header menu item that is labeled, "Format". When you do this a sub menu appears. You will see an item in the sub menu labeled "Sheet". Click that sub menu item. That brings up yet another sub menu. You will notice in this third menu an option that is labeled "Tab Color". When you click on this third menu item it will bring up the color palette as it did in the previous example. Everything hereafter is identical.

You can see that the second approach adds a couple more steps but the end result is still the same. Which way you do it is completely up to you.