Max number of worksheets in a file

[Bob W.]

Is there a limit on the number of worksheets that can be contained in a
single Excel file?

[Bearacade]

I don't think there is a limit. But why would you want that many worksheets? It becomes unmanagable after X amount

[Bob W.]

My wife is a bookkeeper in a small law firm and uses Excel for keeping track
of trust fund activity... she has a separate tab for each of the firm's
clients and she's worried that too many worksheets will cause problems in
Excel... currently she has about 350 worksheets in the file.

"Bearacade" wrote:

>
> I don't think there is a limit. But why would you want that many
> worksheets? It becomes unmanagable after X amount
>
>
> --
> Bearacade
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bearacade's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=35016
> View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=558970
>
>

[Gord Dibben]

Bob

Help> "limits and specifications" says this.............

Sheets in a workbook Limited by available memory (default is 3 sheets)

350 sheets is pushing the envelope vis a vis manageable.

Not the number of sheets per se, but the attendant file size can get unwieldy.

See Charles Williams' site for assistance and info on calculations and speeding
up.

http://www.decisionmodels.com/


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP


On Thu, 6 Jul 2006 09:26:02 -0700, Bob W. <[email protected]>
wrote:

>My wife is a bookkeeper in a small law firm and uses Excel for keeping track
>of trust fund activity... she has a separate tab for each of the firm's
>clients and she's worried that too many worksheets will cause problems in
>Excel... currently she has about 350 worksheets in the file.
>
>"Bearacade" wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't think there is a limit. But why would you want that many
>> worksheets? It becomes unmanagable after X amount
>>
>>
>> --
>> Bearacade
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Bearacade's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=35016
>> View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=558970
>>
>>

[Bearacade]

In your wife's case, I would definitely seperate out each client to their own workbook.

For three reasons:

Speed of calculation

Size of File

If something goes wrong with that one giant file, your wife is SOL. vs lost data on 1 client is MUCH better.

[Dave Peterson]

On the other hand, I would take a different approach.

I'd put all the data in one worksheet in a single workbook. I'd add an
indicator column (or a few) to show to whom the data belongs.

But then I can use that giant worksheet to do other stuff--group results, charts
and graphs, pivottables.

If I needed to separate the data into separate worksheets to share, I'd put them
in separate workbooks, too. Don't hide sheets or hide data expecting that
others won't be able to find it in excel. (Excel's security isn't made for
that.)

This assumes that all the data fits in about 40k rows (sometimes excel will slow
down greatly when the amount of data/formulas get too large).



Bob W. wrote:
>
> My wife is a bookkeeper in a small law firm and uses Excel for keeping track
> of trust fund activity... she has a separate tab for each of the firm's
> clients and she's worried that too many worksheets will cause problems in
> Excel... currently she has about 350 worksheets in the file.
>
> "Bearacade" wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't think there is a limit. But why would you want that many
> > worksheets? It becomes unmanagable after X amount
> >
> >
> > --
> > Bearacade
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Bearacade's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=35016
> > View this thread: http://www.excelforum.com/showthread...hreadid=558970
> >
> >

--

Dave Peterson

[SteveW]

On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 20:01:49 +0100, Dave Peterson =

<[email protected]> wrote:

> On the other hand, I would take a different approach.
>
> I'd put all the data in one worksheet in a single workbook. I'd add a=
n
> indicator column (or a few) to show to whom the data belongs.
>
> But then I can use that giant worksheet to do other stuff--group =

> results, charts
> and graphs, pivottables.
>
> If I needed to separate the data into separate worksheets to share, I'=
d =

> put them
> in separate workbooks, too. Don't hide sheets or hide data expecting =
=

> that
> others won't be able to find it in excel. (Excel's security isn't mad=
e =

> for
> that.)
>
> This assumes that all the data fits in about 40k rows (sometimes excel=
=

> will slow
> down greatly when the amount of data/formulas get too large).
>
>

a *much* safer solution.

But as with most *small excel solutions* that grow, difficult to think =

like that at the initial design stage.

Worth the effort in chanmging that though.
-- =

Steve (3)

[jujuwillis]

The standard for the amount of worksheets is 255, or it least to be in previous Excel Workbooks up to Excel 2000, this was the same for the amount of characters in any cell = 255. I sure someone will correct me on this. The number of worksheets set to "3" has been set in tools, options, general.
The majority of the time we only need 1 or 2 worksheets in any one workbook. It all depends on what the administrator has set it to. I think Excel 95 was set to 16 by default and Excel 2000 is set to 3.

Hope this is of help.