Color code your sheet tabs

Built-in feature

By Neale Blackwood

Colour is a powerful communicator. Effective use of colour in your spreadsheets can make them easier to use and understand. One of the ways to use it is to colour code your sheet tabs. Eg you might have sheets for instructions, workings, data, input and reporting in the one workbook.

You could use different tab colours for each type of sheet. So all the instruction sheets have the same tab colour; all your data sheets have the same colour, etc. This can assist users identify what type of sheet they are in. You can put a legend into the Instructions sheet to inform users what the colour coding means.

To change tab colours right click the tab name and select Tab Color from the menu, pick a color and click OK.