Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 in 24 Hours

Opening an Existing Workbook

Excel provides many ways for you to open workbook files. If the file you want is one that you've worked with recently, you can launch Excel and open the file at the same time. Click the Windows Start button, choose My Recent Documents from the Start menu, and then click the file you want from the list of the most recent documents you opened.

If Excel is already open, or you aren't sure of the exact name or location of the file, your best bet is to use Excel's Open command. Click the Open button on the Standard toolbar, or choose File, Open, to display the Open dialog box. You'll feel comfortable with the Open dialog box (see Figure 4.2) because it looks and acts very much like the Save As dialog box you worked with ...