Do you have any Excel OCD habits?

[Norie]

I'm waiting until you can put pictures on the tabs - perhaps even small thumbnails of the sheets.

That might save the user actually looking at the worksheets.

 

[cornflakegirl]

So now we can hear from those that hate tab colors.

Yeah, that would be me. A couple of my finance colleagues colour tabs - probably in the spirit that you describe, except that I don't know what the colours signify. And they're not even nice pastel colours!

 

[Greg Truby]

Yeah, that would be me. A couple of my finance colleagues colour tabs - probably in the spirit that you describe, except that I don't know what the colours signify. And they're not even nice pastel colours!

You're right - unless you know the key or it's part of a widely known SOP, doing it for that reason wouldn't help a lot. However, I color the tabs for two reasons -
(a) grouping like information or showing which "color" of a worksheet it is. I will frequently use say a blue accent on Report A and a green accent on Report B, perhap purple on Report C and color the tabs to correspond. Folks pick up on color coordination pretty quickly. And
(b) If the tabs are colored, then it helps (doesn't guarantee it - but it helps) make it likely that I'll notice that I'm in group mode. Less of an issue these days. But I've had cases in the past where I would be editing several worksheets in group mode and the phone would ring or a colleague would stop by and when I returned to Excel, I'd forget I was in group mode and make a royal mess of things.

 

[Norie]

You could take things further - colour every single cell with data based on the type of data in it and/or the value.

For ease of use you could add a legend to the right.

Could be useful for some 'models'.

 

[Greg Truby]

...colour every single cell with data based on the type of data in it and/or the value.

We already have a thread on that concept - see Jon vdH's thread on "Do You Use Styles".

 

[Joe C]

i'm waiting until you can put pictures on the tabs - perhaps even small thumbnails of the sheets.

That might save the user actually looking at the worksheets.

dude i i want to do that so bad

 

[Domski]

dude i i want to do that so bad

Where's my gun?

Dom

 

[RoryA]

I compulsively answer Excel questions - does that count?

 

[Rastaman]

Hey, I didn't say my tab coloring was useful or effective, it's just one of my habits. Another thing I hate is really long tab names. Having to scroll right to find the fourth tab because the names are too long is a pain. But I guess if the tabs were all pretty pictures I'd enjoy it... once. Oh, and I don't like spaces in tab names. When typing/editing a formula I can never remember which side of the ! the ' goes.

Rick

 

[TinaP]

Like Greg, I like to color tabs of like information. I have one workbook with about 45 sheets. 15 are individual branches, 3 are regions, 3 are purely informational and the rest are departmental; each color group has its own formatting, columns, etc.

For some reason, I always use orange for sheets of data tables--don't know why.