Excel® 2010 Power Programming with VBA

Chapter 4: Understanding Excel Files

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Starting Excel

• Opening and saving different types of files in Excel

• Introducing the XML file format in Excel 2007

• Figuring out how Excel uses the Windows Registry

Starting Excel

You can start Excel in various ways, depending on how it's installed. You can click an icon on the desktop, use the Windows Start button, or double-click a file associated with the Excel application. All methods ultimately launch the excel.exe executable file.

When Excel 2010 starts, it performs the following actions:

• It reads its settings stored in the Windows Registry.

• It reads and applies any Quick Access toolbar or Ribbon customizations defined in the Excel.officeUI file.

• It opens the *.xlb menu/toolbar customization file.

• It opens all add-ins that are installed (that is, those that are checked in the Add-Ins dialog box).

• It opens any workbooks that are in the XLStart directory.

• It opens any workbooks that are in the alternate start-up directory (specified in the Advanced tab of the Excel Options dialog box).

• It determines whether Excel ended with a crash the last time it was used. If so, it displays a list of autorecovered workbooks.

• It displays an empty workbook — unless the user specified a workbook to open or one or more files were found in the XLStart or alternate start-up directory.

You can install Excel in any location. But in most cases, the Excel executable file is located in the default installation directory: