How to color Google Sheets tabs?

Google Sheets primarily helps us handle information. In fact, a lot of it. Besides providing us with tools that help us reorganize, manipulate, analyze and summarize metrics. Because this cloud-based application lets us store huge data, the concept of worksheets makes sense. Because we can segregate similar information under various names. With this feature, fishing out specific information becomes a lot easier. Not only that, but we can also color Google Sheets tabs, and we will explain how in this article.

Why color Google Sheets tabs?

While naming the worksheet tabs is already so beneficial, why do we have to color them at all? That’s because color is far more intuitive and stands out. Also, our eyes tend to identify color much before text. Picking something from a collection becomes a lot easier when we can do it using color codes. Text takes us a lot more time and effort . Which is one of the reasons, even the traffic signals are color coded.

For the purposes of demonstration, let us consider the a sample financial accounting spreadsheet. By default, an active worksheet tab is white while the inactive ones are in gray color.

Example

And, more often than not, we will have much higher number of tabs in data intensive spreadsheets. In such case, picking the right worksheet wouldn’t be that straightforward, if we do not differentiate using colors.

Intuitively, we associate expenses with red color and revenues with green. So, let us try that with tabs as well. Coloring a worksheet tab is pretty straightforward. Right click on the tab, select Change color, and click on a red shade that suits our preference.

Example

We will repeat it for the Revenue worksheet, except we choose a shade of green. Once done, this is how the Google Sheets file will look like.

Example

Even if we had many other worksheets in the file, these colored ones easily stand out for us to be able to select them faster.

On another note, go through the following blog posts to learn how you can easily Filter by color in Google Sheets and how to create an alternated colors list in Google Sheets.