Switch Between Sheets in Excel: Shortcuts for Windows, Mac & Web

Next and previous sheet: Ctrl + PgDn / Ctrl + PgUp

Hold Ctrl and press PgDn to move one sheet to the right. Keep holding Ctrl and press PgDn again to keep going. Ctrl + PgUp moves to the left.

A few things to know:

• It stops at the ends. On the last sheet, Ctrl + PgDn does nothing. It doesn't wrap back to the first sheet.
• Hidden sheets are skipped.
• No PgUp/PgDn keys on your laptop? Many laptops put them on the arrow keys as Fn + ↓ and Fn + ↑ (look for the small PgDn/PgUp labels). Then Ctrl + Fn + ↓ is the next sheet and Ctrl + Fn + ↑ the previous one.
• Ctrl + Tab switches workbook windows, not sheets. If you have two files open, Ctrl + Tab (or Ctrl + F6) jumps between them.

Select several sheets with Ctrl + Shift + PgDn

Ctrl + Shift + PgDn adds the next sheet to the selection, and Ctrl + Shift + PgUp adds the previous one. Anything you type or format then goes onto every selected sheet at once, which is handy for setting up twelve identical month sheets.

Excel shows Group in the title bar while sheets are grouped. Click any sheet that isn't selected (or right-click a selected tab › Ungroup Sheets) before you carry on, or your next edits will go to all of them.

Jump to any sheet from a list

With 20 or 30 tabs, pressing Ctrl + PgDn twenty times is slow. Excel has a list of every sheet that most people never find:

1. Right-click the small arrows to the left of the sheet tabs.
2. The Activate dialog lists every visible sheet.
3. Double-click a name, or start typing it and press Enter.

In Microsoft 365 (Windows and Mac) you can also open View › Navigation. The pane lists every sheet, plus the tables, charts, PivotTables, images and named ranges on each, and you click one to go there. Right-click the status bar and tick Sheet Number to get a "Sheet 3 of 24" counter that opens the same pane.

In Excel for the web, the All Sheets menu in the lower-left corner lists every sheet.

Go to a sheet and cell with Ctrl + G

Go To jumps straight to a cell on another sheet:

1. Press Ctrl + G or F5.
2. In Reference, type the sheet name, an exclamation mark and the cell, for example dec!O20.
3. Press Enter.

If the sheet name has spaces or punctuation, put it in single quotes: 'Sales 2026'!A1.

The list at the top of the dialog remembers the places you went to, so Ctrl + G › double-click is a quick way back. The list empties when you close Excel.

The Name Box (left of the formula bar) does the same thing: click it, type dec!O20 and press Enter.

Make a clickable index of sheets

For a workbook other people use, put a table of contents on the first sheet. Each link takes you to a sheet in one click.

With a formula, which keeps working if you copy it down a list of names:

=HYPERLINK("#'"&A2&"'!A1", A2)

Put the sheet names in column A (A2, A3, …) and this formula in column B. The # tells Excel the link points inside this workbook. The quotes around the name make it work for sheet names with spaces.

With the dialog: select a cell, press Ctrl + K, choose Place in This Document, pick the sheet and type the cell to land on.

Add a "Back to index" link on each sheet (=HYPERLINK("#Index!A1","Back to index")) and the workbook becomes easy to move around without any shortcuts.

Build the index with a macro

If the workbook has dozens of sheets, a macro can write that index for you. It adds a sheet called Index at the front with one link per sheet:

Sub BuildSheetIndex()
    Dim wb As Workbook, idx As Worksheet, ws As Worksheet, r As Long
    Set wb = ActiveWorkbook

    Application.DisplayAlerts = False
    On Error Resume Next
    wb.Worksheets("Index").Delete
    On Error GoTo 0
    Application.DisplayAlerts = True

    Set idx = wb.Worksheets.Add(Before:=wb.Sheets(1))
    idx.Name = "Index"
    r = 1
    For Each ws In wb.Worksheets
        If ws.Name <> "Index" Then
            idx.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=idx.Cells(r, 1), Address:="", _
                SubAddress:="'" & Replace(ws.Name, "'", "''") & "'!A1", _
                TextToDisplay:=ws.Name
            r = r + 1
        End If
    Next ws
End Sub

To use it, press Alt + F11, choose Insert › Module, paste the code and press F5 with the cursor inside it. Run it again after adding sheets: it deletes the old Index sheet and builds a fresh one, so don't type anything else on that sheet. Save the file as Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (.xlsm) to keep the macro. If the editor is new to you, see how to view and edit macro code.

FAQ

What is the shortcut to switch tabs in Excel? Ctrl + PgDn moves to the next sheet and Ctrl + PgUp to the previous one on Windows. On a Mac, use Option + → / ←. In Excel for the web, use Ctrl + Alt + PgDn / PgUp in Chrome and Ctrl + PgDn / PgUp elsewhere.

Why doesn't Ctrl + PgDn work? In Chrome, Ctrl + PgDn switches browser tabs, so Excel for the web needs Ctrl + Alt + PgDn there (other browsers and Teams use plain Ctrl + PgDn). On a laptop, PgDn usually needs Fn. If Excel is in cell edit mode (you're typing in a cell), press Enter or Esc first.

How do I switch between Excel files, not sheets? Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + F6 cycles through open workbooks. Alt + Tab switches between all open windows.

How do I see a list of all sheets? Right-click the scroll arrows to the left of the sheet tabs. In Microsoft 365, View › Navigation also lists them, and Excel for the web has an All Sheets menu in the lower-left corner.

More keyboard shortcuts are in Keyboard Shortcuts in Excel.