Renaming Sheets

Setting sheet names is an important feature to produce readable and understandable spreadsheets documents. To rename a sheet in your document:

  1. Click on the sheet tab to select it.

  2. Open the context menu of the sheet tab and choose the Rename Sheet command. A dialog box appears where you can enter a new name.

  3. Enter a new name for the sheet and click OK.

  4. Alternatively, hold down the and click on any sheet name and enter the new name directly.

    The availability of this function depends on your X Window Manager.

Sheet names can contain almost any character. Some naming restrictions apply, the following characters are not allowed in sheet names:

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In cell references, a sheet name must be enclosed in single quotes ' when the name contains other characters than alphanumeric or underscore. A single quote contained within a name has to be escaped by doubling it (two single quotes).


For example, you want to reference the cell A1 on a sheet with the following name:

This year's sheet

The reference must be enclosed in single quotes, and the one single quote inside the name must be doubled:

'This year''s sheet'.A1

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The name of a sheet is independent of the name of the spreadsheet. You enter the spreadsheet name when you save it for the first time as a file.


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The document can contain up to 10,000 individual sheets, which must have different names.


You can set a prefix for the names of new sheets you create. See this page of Calc options.