While it’s all well and good that Excel gives you plenty of choices for customizing its screen display, it sure would be a waste of time if you had to manually modify all the various screen settings each time you started working on a new workbook. Fortunately, you can save your custom display settings as an Excel template, and then any time you need to generate a new spreadsheet that uses those settings, you can do so simply by opening the template. Creating a template
To create an Excel template with your custom display settings, follow these steps:
- Launch Excel and then manually make all the changes to the display settings that you want saved in the new template.
- Choose File -> Save or click the Save button on the Standard toolbar to open the Save As dialog box.
- From the Save as Type drop-down list, choose Template (*.xlt)
- Highlight the temporary filename (Book1, Book2, and so on) in the File Name combo box (be sure you don’t select the .xlt filename extension) and then type in a descriptive name for the new template.
- Click Save to close the Save As dialog box and save your settings in the new template file.
To use your template to generate a new workbook with your custom display settings, follow these steps:
- If the template is currently open, close it by choosing File -> Close on the menu bar or by pressing Ctrl+W. You must close a new template file before you can generate files from it.
- Choose File➪New to open the New Workboo task pane.
- Select the On My Computer link under the Templates section of the New Workbook task pane. The Templates dialog box opens.
- Double-click the name of the template you want to use, or click its name and then click OK. Excel opens up a new blank workbook from the template file, using all the custom display settings that you saved as part of it.
To use your new template, don’t click the New button on the Standard toolbar or press the keystroke shortcut Ctrl+N. Doing so automatically opens a new workbook using the Excel out-of-the-box settings, giving you no opportunity to generate the new book from any other template. Choose File➪New on the menu bar instead.