Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Inside Out

Do You Need More Than One Worksheet?

Spreadsheet programs began as a better way to store, present, and interpret information that previously had been kept on paper and calculated by hand, probably using a 10-key calculator. Often the first sheets we created when we were climbing the old Excel learning curve were little more than clean two-dimensional reproductions of what we used to do on paper. One way to step up from the old paper paradigm is to use modular design. Modular design is a sort of "structured programming" or "object oriented" approach, where you carve your data into logical chunks that make sense as stand-alone elements. (The other design approach is called hierarchical, which is organized for error identification and maximum readability.) ...