How to navigate between worksheets in Excel

Clicking on the sheet name on the bottom of the window is the most straightforward way of tab navigation in Excel, but there's more! Some of the other methods we're going to take a look at here can be especially helpful when dealing with a large number of worksheets. In this guide, we are going to show you various methods for tab navigation between worksheets in Excel.

Keyboard Shortcuts

As with pretty much every Excel feature out there, you can use keyboard shortcuts for tab navigation. The magic keys are:

Using these shortcuts, you can switch between adjacent sheets quickly. If you need to jump multiple sheets, press the Page Up or Page Down keys multiple times while holding down the Ctrl key.

Tip: For more neat shortcuts, please visit 10 Most Useful Shortcuts in Excel.

List of sheets

As an alternative method, you can use the list of sheets in the active workbook and select the sheet you want to go. You need to open the Activate window to navigate between worksheets.

Right-click on the double arrows near the sheets tab bar. You can see the related tooltip when you hover your mouse over this area.

Right-click on the arrows area to open the Activate window.

Now you can see all sheets as a list. Double-click the sheet you want to go to.

Tip: If you click the buttons while holding down the Ctrl key, Excel activates the first or the last sheet, based on the arrow clicked.

Navigate between worksheets using the Go To window

Excel's Go To window actually gives you a list where you can access defined named ranges or tables. However, you can use the cell/range navigation feature to navigate between sheets as well. When you go to a cell on a different sheet, you make that sheet active.

To use this feature for navigation, before opening the Go To window, first define the named ranges on the sheets you want to access. If you need to help about defining named range, please see this article.

After adding your named ranges, press the F5 key to open the Go To window. Alternatively, you can also find this option in the Ribbon, under the Find & Select button in the Home tab.

Navigate between worksheets using Hyperlinks

The internal hyperlinks of Excel work very similar to their external variations. Internal hyperlinks are also underlined and are blue hyperlinks that are clickable. You can also set a friendly name to replace long URLs.

You have two options for using internal hyperlinks:

Cell options
HYPERLINK function

Cell options

Right-click on a cell
Click Hyperlink
Select Place in This Document in Link to list
Enter a friendly name in Text to display
You can directly type in the reference you want to go to in Type the cell reference, or select the sheet name from the Or select a place in this document list
Click OK to create your hyperlink

You can add hyperlinks to shapes as well. This way, you can use button illustrations as hyperlinks.

HYPERLINK Formula

You can use the HYPERLINK formula to create internal hyperlinks in Excel. This works just like external web hyperlinks with one exception - You need to add a # character before the reference. Also, the reference should be a full reference including both the sheet name and a cell. We used A1 cell in our example.

=HYPERLINK("#'Filter by Formula'!A1","Beam me up, Scotty")