How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac

Business managers and owners group worksheets in Excel so that changes made to one worksheet apply automatically to all connected worksheets. When you group worksheets together, the tabs at the bottom of Excel turn white to indicate that they’re selected and grouped. Although this feature helps you to update identical data quickly across many worksheets, it can also cause you to accidentally make undesired changes if you forget that you’re working within a group. To prevent errors, Microsoft has designed Excel so that you can effortlessly ungroup tabbed worksheets with keyboard or menu commands.

  1. Separate a single worksheet and tab from the grouped worksheets and tabs. Press the “Ctrl” key on your computer keyboard and click the tab you want to ungroup once. To ungroup additional tabs, click the tabs desired. When you're finished, release the "Ctrl" key.

  2. Ungroup all of the worksheets and tabs. Right-click any grouped tab at the bottom of the workbook to open a pop-up menu of options and then click the “Ungroup Sheets” option.

  3. Confirm that you’ve ungrouped the tabs. Check that the color of the tab or tabs has changed from white to default blue (or the color or colors used to organize the worksheets). If you ungrouped all of the tabs, confirm the action by checking that “[Group]” no longer appears at the top of the Excel window near the center of the title bar.

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You can quickly perform tasks on multiple worksheets at the same time by grouping worksheets together. If you group a set of worksheets, any changes you make on one worksheet are made in all the other worksheets in the group in the exact same location on the worksheets. If you want to create, for example, standard tables or calculations on a large number of worksheets, grouping can save you a lot of time. This works best if the worksheets already have identical data structures.

In this article

  • Group selected worksheets

  • Ungroup selected worksheets

  • Group all worksheets

  • Ungroup all worksheets

Group selected worksheets

In the example below, a workbook has multiple worksheets for different cities. All the worksheets have identical structures showing sales of coffee drinks.

How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac

To perform the same tasks for a particular set of worksheets, follow the steps below.

  1. Press and hold down the Ctrl key, and click the worksheet tabs you want to group.

    How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac

    Tip: If you want to group consecutive worksheets, click the first worksheet tab in the range, press and hold the Shift key, and click the last worksheet tab in the range.

  2. Now, suppose you want to add the same formula to cell B7 on both the “Paris” and “London” worksheets. When grouped, the change will happen on both worksheets when either worksheet is modified. For example, a formula change to the Paris worksheet is automatically made to the London worksheet:

    How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac
    How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac

    Note: When you group worksheets, the name of the workbook changes to include [Group].

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Ungroup selected worksheets

If you don’t want to apply specific tasks to a particular set of worksheets, ungroup selected worksheets.

  • Press and hold the Ctrl key, and click the worksheet tabs you want to ungroup.

Group all worksheets

You can easily group all the worksheets in a workbook.

  1. Right-click any worksheet tab.

  2. Click Select All Sheets.

    How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac
    How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac

    Note: When you group all worksheets, browsing through the worksheets ungroups them. You can browse through the grouped worksheets without ungrouping them if you don’t select all worksheets.

    How to ungroup worksheets in Excel on Mac

Ungroup all worksheets

When you’ve made all the changes, you can ungroup the worksheets.

  1. Right-click any worksheet tab in the group.

  2. Click Ungroup Sheets.

    Tip: To ungroup all worksheets, you can also click any worksheet tab outside the group.

See Also

Enter data manually in worksheet cells

Need more help?

How do I group and ungroup worksheets in Excel for Mac?

Press and hold down the ⌘ (command) key, and then click on each of the worksheet tabs you want to group. Alternatively, click the first worksheet tab you want to group, press and hold the Shift key, and then click the last worksheet tab to group consecutive worksheets.

How do you ungroup in Excel for Mac?

To ungroup, use the shortcut Alt Shift left arrow in Windows and Command Shift J on a Mac. Again, if you only have cells selected, you'll get a dialog, and you'll need to choose wether you want to ungroup rows or columns.

How do you ungroup sheets on a Mac?

Group objects: Select multiple objects, then Control-click one of the objects and choose Group from the shortcut menu. Ungroup objects: Control-click the group, then choose Ungroup from the shortcut menu.

How do you group worksheets in Excel on a Mac?

Press and hold down the Ctrl key, and click the worksheet tabs you want to group. Tip: If you want to group consecutive worksheets, click the first worksheet tab in the range, press and hold the Shift key, and click the last worksheet tab in the range.