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.

 

[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

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]

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).

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.

 

[SteveW]

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).

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.