Microsoft Office

Part I
Getting Started with Excel
Creating a workbook template can eliminate repeating work. Assume that you create a monthly sales report
that consists of your company’s sales by region, plus several summary calculations and charts. You can create
a template file that consists of everything except the input values. Then, when it’s time to create your
report, you can open a workbook based on the template, fill in the blanks, and be finished.
You could, of course, just use the previous month’s workbook and save it with a different
name. This is prone to errors, however, because you easily can forget to use the Save As command
and accidentally overwrite the previous month’s file. Another option is to use the New From Existing
option in the New Workbook dialog box. This command creates a new workbook from an existing one, but
gives a different name to ensure that the old file is not overwritten,
NOTE
When you create a workbook that’s based on a template, the default workbook name is the template name
with a number appended. For example, if you create a new workbook based on a template named Sales
Report.xltx, the workbook’s default name is Sales Report1.xlsx. The first time that you save a
workbook that is created from a template, Excel displays its Save As dialog box so that you can give the
template a new name if you want to.
A custom template is essentially a normal workbook, and it can use any Excel feature, such as charts, formulas,
and macros. Usually, a template is set up so that the user can enter values and get immediate results. In
other words, most templates include everything but the data, which is entered by the user.
NOTE
If your template contains macros, it must be saved as an Excel Macro-Enabled Template, with
an XLTM extension.
Saving your custom templates
To save a workbook as a template, choose Office ➪ Save As and select Template (*.xltx) from the dropdown
list labeled Save As Type. If the workbook contains any VBA macros, select Excel Macro-Enabled
Locking Formula Cells in a Template File
If novices will use the template, you might consider locking all the formula cells to make sure that the formulas
aren’t deleted or modified.
1. Press F5 to display the Go To dialog box.
2. Click the Special button to display the Go To Special dialog box.
3. Select Constants and click OK. This step selects all of the nonformula cells.
4. Right-click any one of the selected cells and choose Format Cells from the shortcut menu. The
Format Cells dialog box appears.
5. In the Format Cells dialog box, click the Protection tab.
6. Remove the check mark from the Locked check box.
7. Click OK to close the Format Cells dialog box.
8. Choose Review ➪ Changes ➪ Protect Sheet to display the Protect Sheet dialog box.
9. Specify a password if you like and click OK.
After you perform these steps, you can’t modify the formula cells — unless the sheet is unprotected.
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