Workbooks and tabs

Organize related work across multiple tabs in one workbook and reference cells on other tabs with Excel-style qualified references.

A workbook is a single sheet document with one or more named tabs. Each tab has its own grid — its own bound query, calculated columns, and free cells — and tabs can reference one another, just like Excel or Google Sheets. This is the model introduced in ADR-0034 (multi-tab workbooks and cross-sheet references).

#Tabs in a workbook

Use the tab bar at the bottom of the editor to add, rename, and reorder tabs by dragging them. A workbook is stored as one record, so all its tabs save, share, and version together. A new tab can be bound to its own exploration or left as a blank grid for free-form formulas.

A workbook can hold up to 32 tabs.

Note

Sheets created before workbooks existed still open normally — a single-grid sheet is read as one tab named "Sheet 1".

#Cross-sheet references

Reference a cell or range on another tab by qualifying it with the tab name and a !:

=Orders!A1
='Cash Flow'!B2
=SUM(Orders!B2:B100)
=VLOOKUP(A2, Orders!A:C, 3, FALSE)
  • Tab names without spaces are written bare (Orders!A1).
  • Names with spaces or punctuation are single-quoted ('Cash Flow'!B2), with '' to escape a quote inside the name.
  • Lookup functions such as VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, and XLOOKUP work across tabs once the range is qualified — no special syntax is required.

Circular references, even across tabs, are detected and reported as #CYCLE!.

#When references break

Situation Result
A referenced tab is deleted or its name no longer resolves #REF!
A range tries to span two different tabs #NAME?

Renaming a tab rewrites the qualified references that point to it, so formulas keep working. If a rewrite cannot find its target, the affected cell shows #REF! so the break is visible rather than silent.

#Next steps