Good news for Excel on Mac users who like to “live dangerously” with more than one worksheet at a time. Excel for Mac is finally catching up with Windows to view multiple worksheets from the same workbook side-by-side. No more tabbing back and forth like you’re playing Whack-A-Mole with your data.
Historically, Excel for Mac had a bit of a one-track mind—you could only view one worksheet per workbook window. Want to compare Sheet1 and Sheet2? Sorry, choose your favorite. But now, at long last, Excel for Mac lets you open multiple windows from the same workbook.
Yes, that means glorious side-by-side views either horizontally (left) or vertically (right) like this:
How to Unlock This Sorcery
- Open your Excel workbook.
- Click on the Window menu.
- Select New Window to open an extra view of the same workbook.
- Go to View | View Side by Side
Each window shows the same workbook, but you can navigate to different sheets. Drag one to a second monitor and feel like a spreadsheet DJ.
Windows users might be wondering what all the fuss is about. Excel for Windows has had ‘View Side-by-side’ and ‘Synchronous scrolling’ for some years. Go to View | Window and look for the two buttons.
But wait, there’s more …
On recent macOS, hover over the green ‘full screen’ icon (top-left) to see some windows positioning options. Use those to put the two Excel windows into the positions you want. That’s how I quickly rearranged the windows to make the above ‘side-by-side’ examples.
Synchronized scrolling
Along with ‘View Side by Side’ comes ‘Synchronous Scrolling’. That means when moving around one sheet view, the other sheet with move in the same way.
That’s really handy for viewing two related parts of the same sheet, for example segments of a large table.
Why This Matters
- Compare sheets without clicking like a caffeinated maniac.
- Keep your formulas in one window (Formulas | Show Formulas) and results in the other.
- Spend less time getting more done (or at least looking really productive).
Who Gets It?
This is rolling out to Microsoft 365 Insiders (Beta Channel) on Mac first, from v16.84 build 24041422.
