Microsoft Office

Understanding Excel’s Files
Excel, of course, uses files to store its workbooks. This chapter discusses
how Excel uses files and provides an overview of the various types of files.
It also discusses the new Excel 2007 file formats and describes how to determine
what (if anything) will be lost if you save your workbook in an earlier file format.
Excel File Operations
This section describes the operations that you perform with workbook files:
opening, saving, closing, deleting, and so on.
As you read through this section, 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).
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
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 new project from scratch, you can use this
blank workbook.
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