Is it true you can't send a single tab from excel in an email?

I really think the easiest way would be to use a PDF printer driver like Cute PDF Writer to print that one sheet. By design, it really isn’t any more of a hassle than printing it out hardcopy; those drivers were made that way partly for simplicity (it’s easier than trying to get what you want from an office suite), partly for transparency (you don’t need to do anything special except send it to a different “printer”), and partly for compatibility, as they work with any program that has a Print option.

You can’t send “a tab” from Excel, but you can very easily make and mail single-worksheet workbooks, if that’s what you mean.

If you have a worksheet in Excel that’s dependent upon other worksheets, such as for lookups, indexing and other formula references, and you prefer not to send the reference worksheets, since they may contain proprietary formulas, personal / private information, etc., then the solution to “send a worksheet” is different. In that case you can create a copy of your target worksheet in a new workbook, and change all of the formula references to values. (Just put your mouse in the top-left corner of the worksheet – the blank cell to the left of “A” and above “1”, click it to “select all cells” and then do a “copy” and “paste special / Values” in the same spot. All formulas will be overwritten.)

When all of your cells are converted to values, there are no more formulas to refer back to the original workbook, and therefore no ”#REF” errors when your recipient opens the single-worksheet workbook.

What @jerv said would create a .PDF copy of the sheet, which is good for users who only need to read and print the sheet. (Sometimes users want “a spreadsheet” so that they can use your values to perform additional calculations, and sending them a “sheet of values” would mean that they don’t have to transcribe all of the data.)

Excel has a Save As PDF option.

I would recommend PDF over Excel because that prevents the reader from accidentally changing anything.

You can usually also print to pdf, instead of letting the print job go to your default printer. Just be sure to specify that you only want to print the one worksheet. I would rather do that or save to pdf, as @jaytkay mentioned, than install new software to create the pdf.

But honestly, before making a pdf of the one page, I’d probably choose to copy the worksheet into a new Excel file. It’s less fussy, I think you end up with a smaller file, and the receiver sees exactly what you see. You don’t have to worry about whether the print area of the worksheet will exceed a normal page.

By the way, I’m not sure whether you have much experience with Excel, so I’ll mention that to copy an entire worksheet, you only have to click the blank square in the top left corner (between the 1 and the A), and this selects the entire page. Even easier that hitting CTRL-A.

Alternatively, you could “hide” all the tabs you don’t want the receiver to see (right-click the tab, select “Hide”), then send them the whole file. If they remain unaware that the hidden tabs exist, then they will never see them. But, obviously this is not a secure way to keep people from seeing information. The tabs can be unhidden by right-clicking on any tab, and selecting “Unhide”. Actually, I wonder if then locking the file for editing would keep them hidden… that might have possibilities, but I’ve never experimented with it.

But again, all that is more complicated than simply copying the worksheet into a new file and sending that.

You can always password protect the sheet to prevent them from changing things.

Why does it bother you to send the whole workbook? If there is more than one tab with information in it in the original, and you don’t want them to see it, then yes. Just do a ctl A to highlight all the data, then copy it into a new, blank workbook. Hint…set your curser in A1 when you go to paste the info..

Unless things have changed greatly in Excel-world in the past ten years (in this regard, anyway) most password protection in Excel isn’t very worthwhile. I’m not a hacker, cracker or spy by nature, but I have had occasion to have to fix password-protected spreadsheets with errors and other issues, and no access to the original developer. At the time, years ago, I acquired a simple Excel macro that enabled a user to crack nearly any user-developed password used for Excel “worksheet” or “workbook” level protection. (File protection passwords are a different issue, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.)

You can no longer find easy access to those macros on the web. The forums that once promoted that kind of thing as “knowledge that developers should have in case they need it” now regard it as akin to piracy and hacking, and forbid dissemination of those macros.

But you can still find them if you know where to look. And some businesses offer Office password-breaking (for legitimate use only, of course) to those who need it. They’ll prove the validity of the process to you, too, if you want them to break a sheet-level password to prove that they can.

All I’m saying is: Don’t trust Excel or other Office-level passwords too much with really sensitive data. The best way to protect that data is not to give it out, protected or not.

@CWOTUS Can you easily change permissions on Excel files? That is, if she hides the sheets, then allows no one to edit the file, will that keep them hidden unless the file is hacked?

Actually, I am suddenly more interested in whether you can change permissions on pdfs. That would be an incredibly handy skill.

I don’t know if I would still have the ability to crack passwords on current Excel files, @dappled_leaves. It’s a skill / ability that I haven’t needed in the past few years, so even though I still have my resources, I don’t know if they’re still effective. I’d be happy to try if you want to send me a meaningless Excel file to see if I can. (I don’t think the password protection on VBA is so easily penetrable, however.)

I don’t know about the permissions on PDF files. Never played with that.

Thanks everyone. I played around with a sample on my husband’s computer (the document I really need to use is at work) and if I click on the little mailto icon it lets me choose the selected sheet or the entire workbook. The sheet will in the body of an email. I tried it, but I think my husband’s laptop maybe doesn’t have his email linked? I’m not sure. I filled out the email, but I didn’t receive it. It could just be my email, because I am having trouble with my internet reception.

Anyway, it looks that should work. I wanted to see what it looks like when received.

Well, I just learned something! Thanks!