Pulling Data from Another Sheet (Sheet2!A1)

Why This Feature Matters

In professional spreadsheets, dumping hundreds of raw sales rows and your executive summary into a single messy sheet makes work hard to read. Instead, clean workbooks separate data into tabs: one sheet holds raw data, while another clean sheet displays executive summaries and charts.

To display numbers from a background data tab onto your summary tab, you use Cross-Sheet Referencing. Whenever the numbers on the data tab update, your summary tab updates automatically.

How Cross-Sheet References Work

To pull a cell from another tab, write the sheet name followed by an exclamation mark (!) and the cell coordinate:

Step-by-Step Practice Guide

In this workbook, you have two sheets: Summary and RawData. Follow these steps on the Summary tab:

Practice 1 — Pull Actual Sales from RawData

In cell B2 of the Summary sheet, pull the total sales from cell B1 of the RawData sheet.

=RawData!B1

Practice 2 — Calculate Sales Variance

In cell D2, subtract the Target benchmark (C2) from Actual Sales (B2).

=B2-C2

Practice 3 — Pull Total Expenses from RawData

In cell B3 of the Summary sheet, pull total expenses from cell B2 of the RawData sheet.

=RawData!B2

Practice 4 — Calculate Summary Net Profit

In cell B4 of the Summary sheet, subtract Expenses (B3) from Revenue (B2).

=B2-B3

You do not need to type sheet names manually in daily Excel work: simply type =, click the other sheet tab, click the cell you want, and press Enter!