Ravindra BagaleCourses & study guides

1. Excel Basics

1.2 Workbooks, Worksheets and Our Practice Dataset

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In short: A workbook is the file (.xlsx, or .xlsm when it contains macros).

A workbook is the file (.xlsx, or .xlsm when it contains macros). A worksheet (sheet) is one tab inside it. A workbook can have many sheets.

Steps in Excel

  1. Insert a sheet: click the ⊕ next to the sheet tabs, or Shift + F11.
  2. Rename: double-click the tab › type Orders › Enter.
  3. Move or copy: right-click the tab › Move or Copy… › tick Create a copy if needed.
  4. Tab colour: right-click › Tab Color.
  5. Group sheets: Ctrl-click several tabs; whatever you type goes into all grouped sheets. Right-click › Ungroup Sheets when done.
  6. Save: Ctrl + S › choose Excel Workbook (*.xlsx).

Our practice dataset. Throughout this book we use a fictional workbook Blinkit_Maharashtra.xlsx with these sheets:

Sheet Contents
Orders One row per order line: Order ID, Order Date, Platform, City, Area, Store ID, Product, Category, Qty, Unit Price, Amount, Delivery Mins, Payment Mode, Status, Customer
Stores Store ID, Platform, City, Area, City Manager, Manager Email
Products Product ID, Product, Category, Unit Price
FeeSlabs Order value slabs for the delivery fee

Sample rows from Orders:

Order ID Order Date City Area Product Qty Amount Mins Status
BLK-260314-001 14-03-2026 Pune Kothrud Gokul Cow Milk 500 ml 2 ₹64 9 Delivered
BLK-260314-002 14-03-2026 Nashik College Road Nashik Grapes 500 g 1 ₹90 12 Delivered
BLK-260314-003 14-03-2026 Nagpur Dharampeth Nagpur Oranges 1 kg 2 ₹240 11 Delivered
AMN-260314-004 14-03-2026 Kolhapur Rajarampuri Amul Butter 100 g 1 ₹58 14 Cancelled
BLK-260314-005 14-03-2026 Solapur Hotgi Road Solapuri Chaddar (Single) 1 ₹1,299 18 Delivered
AMN-260314-006 14-03-2026 Sambhaji Nagar CIDCO Poha 1 kg 3 ₹195 10 Delivered
BLK-260314-007 14-03-2026 Pune Hinjewadi Ladi Pav (6 pcs) 2 ₹60 8 Delivered
BLK-260314-008 14-03-2026 Pune Baner Chitale Bhakarwadi 250 g 1 ₹110 13 Returned

Order IDs start with BLK for Blinkit and AMN for Amazon Now. Cities are Pune, Solapur, Nashik, Sambhaji Nagar, Kolhapur and Nagpur. Customers in the data are Shraddha Bagale, Ruhi Bagale, Shahrukh, Amir, Salman, Zoya, Ravina, Raja and Rani (e-mails like zoya@example.com). City managers are Ravindra Bagale (Pune) and others from the same list.

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

Many students mix raw data, calculations and the report on one sheet, and then they can't find anything. Keep a separate sheet for raw data, another for lookup/master data, and another for the report. Don't leave a sheet named Sheet1 – give meaningful names like Orders and Stores.

Practice task

Create a workbook with four sheets named Orders, Stores, Products and Report. Colour the raw-data tabs green and the report tab blue. Type the eight sample rows above into Orders.