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Open Excel how YOU want

Excel ships with a relatively customisable interface, particularly via the Tools>Options... menu and the Tools>Customize... menu. Most things in these two areas is persistent despite the workbook opened and, of course, most settings you make in a particular workbook are saved and re-opened with it. However, you will often find yourself making many settings regularly to suit your own purposes. If you would like these to always be the settings you need to set up two templates.

  1. Book.xlt (or Book.xltx in Excel 2007) - This should be a workbook, saved as an Excel template called book.xlt or book.xltx in XL2007, with all the settings you want made to it, number of sheets, page headers/footers, styles, etc.  This should be saved to a special folder, (which may be hidden), called XLStart. This folder is set up during Excel installation and anything in here is started when Excel is.  The book.xlt (or xltx) file will start, instead of the 'built-in' version with Excel's default settings.
  2. Sheet.xlt (or Sheet.xltx in Excel 2007) -  This should be a single-sheeted workbook, saved in the same way and to the same folder, but with the name sheet.xlt (or sheet.xltx in XL2007). This should have all the changes made to your book.xlt (or .xltx).  This will ensure that any sheets added to a workbook will have the same look and feel as the main template.

  3. Posted Jan 03 2008, 06:18 PM by Nick Hodge

Comments

Ron de Bruin wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Tue, Jan 8 2008 5:29 PM

Hi Nick

I have a sheet template page on my site that maybe have useful info for the readers.

www.rondebruin.nl/sheettemplate.htm

Nick Hodge wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Tue, Jan 8 2008 5:50 PM

Ron

Thanks for the link, as a registered user you should now be able to upload it here also if you wish, but thanks for visiting and leaving the link

xcelion wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Wed, Jan 9 2008 2:33 AM

Hi Nick

Congrats for the first Web 2.0 excel site :)

Cool Web 2.0 look

Just of curiosity. Is this site custom developed or modification of any open source frameworks?

Thanks

Xcelion

Nick Hodge wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Wed, Jan 9 2008 2:58 AM

Xcelion

Thanks for dropping by.

If I told you I didn't even know it was Web 2.0, you would know ;-)

I have done some customisation but it is built on the commercial version of Community Server by Telligent

I think they have a limited free version though???

Let me know if you need more

xcelion wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Wed, Jan 9 2008 6:44 AM

Thanks for the information

Looking forward to be one of the best sites for excel

Simon Herbert wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Thu, Jan 10 2008 7:53 AM

Nick - as an extra to this topic, how are your templates set up?

I prefer new workbooks to have 2 sheets but as this can be changed as a persistant value in  "Options, General, Sheets in new Workbook" I don't (currently) use a template...

Nick Hodge wrote re: Open Excel how YOU want
on Thu, Jan 10 2008 3:42 PM

Simon

Yes, certain options like the number of sheets in a workbook are set in Tools>Options, or their equivalent in Excel2007 and are persistent.

This would be used for example to set a 'permanent' Company Header or footer in page setup for example. You would set this in the normal way in the single sheeted book.xlt and then do the same in the single sheeted sheet workbook sheet.xlt. This way you will have a known standard for all sheets in new workbooks and all added sheets in existing. This would also apply to many other things you do each time you start excel. We all do it, we just don't notice it :-)

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