Excel-2003 Previewing Sheets Without Opening

          by James D. Duncan, CPA     June 2004

            If you know how to preview an Excel worksheet without opening it, then you are ahead of me this month.   I just discovered this feature and it comes in handy when I have not named a sheet what I thought I did.

            There are two steps to previewing a spreadsheet, saving it that way or changing an existing sheet to let you preview it.  First, let’s save a sheet so it can be previewed.  Click on file, click on properties, click on Summary tab and notice the box on the bottom that says “Save preview picture”.  Click the check box, fill in any other information you want and press the ok button. 

Now save the sheet and close it.

Let see what the preview looks like before we open it.  Click on file, open, click on the view icon, select preview (only have to do this the first time), and single click on the file you want to preview.  See below what it looks like.

Notice that this only shows you a portion of the sheet.  But that should be enough to let you decide if this is the sheet you are looking for. 

And now let’s see how to change a sheet that shows “Preview not available”.  This is a simple fix.  Open the sheet that does not have a preview.  Click on file, properties, and you get the same screen as above.

Click on the Save preview picture and click on the ok button.  Save the workbook and now you have a preview when ever you want.

            This is a much faster process than opening a sheet, finding it isn’t the one you are looking for, closing it and going to the next one.  I am sure this has been in previous versions of Excel but I just found it.  An expert is the person who has needed something and took the time to figure out how to make it happen.  Or as dad always said, “An expert is anybody more than 50 miles from home.”  Don’t settle for less, make the sheets do what you want them to do. 

James is a member of the OKCPCUG and an expert in Access and Excel. Click here to reach James.