How to Change Tab Color in Excel (Easy-To-Follow Guide)

In this article, you will learn two easy methods to change the colors of worksheets in Excel. 

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Why do sheets in Excel need to be colored?

Coloring tabs in Excel is often used to clearly distinguish between worksheets, especially when the workbook contains multiple tabs.

For example: If your Excel contains reported actuals and management projections for multiple entities across tabs, it would be useful to color all the sheets containing reported actuals in a single color and all the sheets containing management projections in a different color. By doing so, a user can easily distinguish between the kind of data presented in each tab.

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How to change tab colors in Excel?

Step 1: Select the sheet (which you wish to color)

Step 2: Right-click and select ‘Tab Color’

Step 3: Click on the color you wish to use. The tab will now appear in the color chosen.

Note: If you wish to apply a custom color, click on the ‘More Colors’ option, select the color from the ‘Standard’ or ‘Custom’ options and click on ‘OK’.

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Alternatively, you can also change the color of a spreadsheet by following the below steps:

Step 1: Select the sheet (which you wish to color)

Step 2: Select the ‘Home’ option on the Excel Toolbar, click on ‘Format’ and select ‘Tab Color’

Step 3: Follow the same as step 3 described previously

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Can the colors of multiple spreadsheets be changed together in Excel?

Yes, the colors of more than one tab can be changed together in Excel.

To select multiple tabs, press and hold the “CTRL” (“Command” in case of Mac) key and click the tabs you want to select one by one.

If you want to choose multiple tabs that are positioned in order next to each other, click on the first tab and then click on the last tab while holding down the “SHIFT” key. All tabs in between the two clicked ones are now selected.

In either way, after selecting the tabs, follow step 2 and step 3 described in the previous section to color them.

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You can learn about other Excel and Google Sheets formulas and tips that are not mentioned here on this page: LiveFlow‘s How to Guides