Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Using Stored Views.

Using Stored Views

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 19, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016


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Once you have defined the views for a worksheet, you can use them to look at your information in different ways quickly. To select different views, follow these steps:

  1. Display the View tab of the ribbon.
  2. Click the Custom Views tool in the Workbook Views group. Excel displays the Custom Views dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The Custom Views dialog box.

  4. Select a view from those listed in the dialog box.
  5. Click on the Show button. Your display settings are changed to reflect what was previously saved in the view.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (7218) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Using Stored Views.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is five minus 5?

2021-08-25 16:30:41

Philip

The Table-related limitation is why I never use Tables in my workbooks … Shame on Microsoft for leaving some of such significant bugs (although they would call it “undocumented behaviour” rather than bugs) in their products …


2021-08-20 02:35:26

Caroline

As a workaround for using custom views in files with tables, I often use a macro to activate the desired view instead of the built-in custom view menu . I simply record all the settings for the view in a macro and I add a button in the file to activate the view.


2021-08-19 12:56:31

David Czuba

Custom Views is greyed out if a table exists anywhere in the workbook (even hidden worksheets), which is a big limitation that Microsoft ought to address. The tables could be converted to ranges, but then functionality is lost. Maybe a macro could be made that converts the tables to ranges, and then converts them back to tables once the use of Custom Views is done.
Also, don't get Custom Views confused with Scenario Manager (as I sometimes do), which allows the user to give names to scenarios that use different input values to achieve different results with the same worksheets. Both features together can be extremely powerful for creating accounting statements each period for different consumers of the same information.


2017-05-01 09:35:02

Vicki Fintel

Once you store views, can you not change the header? For example, I originally created a worksheet with 2010 in the header. Then I discovered storing views. But ever since I haven't been able to change the year and have it be retained in the header for future use.


2017-04-30 13:35:30

Elaine

Oh my gosh, you have no idea how much time this is going to save me!


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