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Excel 2007 enables you to color-code the worksheets in your workbook. This makes it possible to create a color scheme that helps either identify or prioritize the sheets and the information they contain (as you might with different colored folder tabs in a filing cabinet).
When you color a sheet tab, note that the tab appears in that color only when it isn't the active sheet. The moment you select a color-coded sheet tab, it becomes white with just a bar of the assigned color appearing under the sheet name. Note, too, that when you assign darker colors to a sheet tab, Excel automatically reverses the sheet name text to white when the worksheet is not active.
Color coding sheet tabs
To assign a new color to a sheet tab, follow these three steps:
1. Click the tab to activate the sheet whose tab you want to recolor.
Don't forget that you have to select and activate the sheet whose tab you want to color or you end up coloring the tab of whatever sheet happens to be current at the time you perform the next step.
2. Click the Format button on the Home tab and then highlight Tab Color, press Alt+HOT, or right-click the tab and then highlight Tab Color on the shortcut menu to display its pop-up color palette.
3. Click the color swatch in the color palette that you want to assign to the current sheet tab.
 | To remove color-coding from a sheet tab, click the No Color option at the bottom of the pop-up color palette (Alt+HOT) after selecting it to make the worksheet active. |
Assigning graphic sheet backgrounds
If coloring the sheet tabs isn't enough for you, you can also assign a graphic image to be used as the background for all the cells in the entire worksheet. Just be aware that the background image must either be very light in color or use a greatly reduced opacity in order for your worksheet data to be read over the image. This probably makes most graphics that you have readily available unusable as worksheet background images. It can, however, be quite effective if you have a special corporate watermark graphic (as with the company's logo at extremely low opacity) that adds just a hint of a background without obscuring the data being presented in its cells.
To add a graphic file as the background for your worksheet, take these steps:
1. Press Ctrl+PgDn until the sheet to which you want to assign the graphic as the background is active, or click its sheet tab if it's displayed at the bottom of the workbook window.
You must select and activate the sheet to which the graphic file will act as the background, or you end up changing the background of whatever sheet happens to be current when you perform the next steps.
2. Click the Background command button in the Page Setup group of the Page Layout tab, or press Alt+PSB.
Doing this opens the Sheet Background dialog box, where you select the graphics file that is to become the worksheet background.
3. Open the folder that contains the image you want to use, click its graphic file icon, and click the Insert button.
As soon as you click Insert, Excel closes the Sheet Background dialog box, and the image in the selected file becomes the background image for all cells in the current worksheet. (Usually, the program does this by stretching the graphic so that it takes up all the cells that are visible in the Workbook window. In the case of some smaller images, the program does this by tiling the image so that it's duplicated across and down the viewing area.)
| Keep in mind that a graphic image that you assign as the worksheet background doesn't appear in the printout, unlike the pattern and background colors that you assign to ranges of cells in the sheet. |
To remove a background image, you simply click the Delete Background command button on the Page Layout tab of the Ribbon (which replaces the Background button the moment you assign a background image to a worksheet) or press Alt+PSB again, and Excel immediately clears the image from the entire worksheet.
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