TUESDAY TIPS: Using Excel’s New Window functionality to view sheets side-by-side

How to use New Window

This functionality does exactly what it says on the tin: it opens an additional ‘window’ into your Excel workbook. This allows you to look at different sections / sheets in the same file simultaneously. The windows can be arranged over different screens or side-by-side on the same screen as shown below.

Where to find the New Window functionality

Go to the View -> Window -> New Widow or use the shortcut Alt + W + N.

When to use New Window

This tool is really useful when reviewing a model or file. In the above example, it allows the user to view the impact of a change in assumption on the financial statement outputs in the model.

You can open as many additional windows as you need. As these windows represent different views into the same workbook, you can make changes in any of the open windows and these will be reflected in your file.

A cautionary note

When using this functionality, each New Window will display the name of the file, plus a suffix showing the number of the window. The first ‘New Window’ will therefore use the suffix “- 2” as shown below. When you have finished using these additional windows, be sure to close the additional windows rather than the original window, otherwise you may lose some view preferences from your file (such as pane freezing and the gridline toggle) as these are unique to each window.

More to come…

We will be publishing a new tip every Tuesday – follow our page on LinkedIn to be notified of our posts.