John Walkenbach's Favorite Excel 2010 Tips and Tricks

Chapter 9. Working with Files

In this part, you'll find tips that deal with files — information that every Excel user should know (but many don't).

Tips and Where to Find Them

• Tip 174 Understanding the New Excel File Formats 377

• Tip 175 Importing a Text File into a Worksheet Range 379

• Tip 176 Getting Data from a Web Page 381

• Tip 177 Displaying a Workbook's Full Path 385

• Tip 178 Using Document Properties 387

• Tip 179 Inspecting a Workbook 389

• Tip 180 Finding the Missing No to All Button When Closing Files 391

• Tip 181 Getting a List of Filenames 392

• Tip 182 Using Workspace Files 394

Understanding the New Excel File Formats

Perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of Excel is the nearly overwhelming number of file formats that it can read and write. With the introduction of Excel 2007, things got even more confusing because it has quite a few new file formats.

This tip describes the new file formats used by Excel 2007 and Excel 2010.

Recognizing the new Excel file formats

Excel's new file formats are

• XLSX: A workbook file that doesn't contain macros

• XLSM: A workbook file that contains macros

• XLTX: A workbook template file that doesn't contain macros

• XLTM: A workbook template file that contains macros

• XLSA: An add-in file

• XLSB: A binary file similar to the old XLS format but able to accommodate the new features

• XLSK: A backup file

With the exception of XLSB, these are all open XML file formats, which means that other applications can read and write these types of files.

Note

The XML files are ZIP-compressed ...