Contents sheet with links in Excel

A new feature has appeared in Excel which solves a common problem. With bigger spreadsheets (lots of sheets) it is a good idea to create an index sheet at the beginning so that you can jump to various sheets without manually scrolling through the sheets. This will act like a contents sheet (with links) to make navigation easier.

Navigation button in View ribbon

If you are on Office365 Excel you may notice a new button has appeared in the View ribbon called Navigation.

Contents sheet with links in Excel

If you click the Navigation button you will see, on the right hand side, a Navigation pane appears with every sheet name of the current spreadsheet listed. These are link buttons, so if you click on them you will jump to that sheet in the spreadsheet but there is more.

Contents sheet with links in Excel

Find all the Tables, Charts, Pivot Tables and Images in the spreadsheet

You will notice the option for more details ( > ). If you click on this it shows the other elements that are in that sheet i.e. tables, charts, PivotTables, and images located on the sheet with the name they are given (see below). You can make some changes directly in the Navigation pane (right click to see the options) but the real use is the ease of finding these elements.

So if you look at a formula and it is making reference to a Table name and you don’t know where it is, you can look through the navigation pane and find which sheet it is on AND click on it to jump there.