Chapter 7. Understanding Excel Files

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating a new workbook

Opening an existing workbook

Saving and closing workbooks

Sharing workbooks with those who use an older version of Excel

Excel, of course, uses files to store its workbooks. This chapter describes the operations that you perform with workbook files: opening, saving, closing, deleting, and so on. It discusses how Excel uses files and provides an overview of the various types of files. Most of the file operations discussed here occur in the new Backstage view, the screen that you see when you click File on the Excel Ribbon.

This chapter also discusses the Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 file formats and describes how to determine what (if anything) will be lost if you save your workbook in an earlier file format.

As you read through this chapter, remember that you can have any number of workbooks open simultaneously, and that only one workbook is the active workbook at any given time. The workbook's name appears in its title bar (or in the Excel title bar if the workbook is maximized).

7.1. Creating a New Workbook

When you start Excel normally, it automatically creates a new (empty) workbook called Book1. This workbook exists only in memory and has not been saved to disk. By default, this workbook consists of three worksheets named Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. If you're starting a project from scratch, you can use this blank workbook.

While you're working in Excel, you can create a new (empty) workbook at any time. ...

Get Excel® 2010 Bible now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.