There are many ways to start your Excel program, here are the most common methods:
- Click on the Start button, select "Excel" or "Microsoft Excel" in the list.
- If the Excel icon is on your shortcut bar you can click on it.
- By double-clicking on an Excel document; this will open that document with Excel.
- You may also have an Excel icon on your desktop, in this case you can double-click it.
- ...
Creating a new Workbook
If you ran Excel without clicking on an existing document, Excel will display a screen that allows you to open an existing Workbook or create a new one. You will create a "Blank Workbook".
Note that Excel comes with many "Templates". Templates are Workbooks that are pre-filled with some data, formulas and formats, so that you do not have to start your spreadsheets from scratch. These templates come for many different purposes, for example: lists, calendars, invoices, loan calculators... They are a great way to learn about Excel and get additional ideas of what you can do with Excel in your personal and professional life.
The name of your Workbook will be named by default "
Book1" until you save the Workbook as a different name. This workbook will contain one worksheet. You can start entering information in your spreadsheet. Click any cell, type any number or text you want, and then press the "Enter" key. Then, you should save your workbook.
Saving a Workbook
To save a new workbook, you can click the Save button located on the top left of your window:
You can also click on the "File" menu and choose "Save". This will do exactly the same.
The first time you save the workbook Excel will display the "
File" tab with "
Save As" highlighted. You can save your file to many different locations ("Folders"). Excel usually shows on the right the folders where you have recently saved files. Selecting one of these locations or clicking on the Browse button will bring up the "
Save As" window.
Click a folder and then, if need be, click a folder within that folder, or click on the arrow up to access the parent folder, as you build the "path" to where you want the file to be saved. The "path" of the file made up the the drive letter (usually "C") and the folders that you must go through to get to the file. By default Excel will offer to save the workbook in the "
Documents" folder. You may want to store the file directly in that Documents folder or you may want to create a folder within that folder (e.g. "myExcelFiles") and then store your files in it.
The File name is "
Book1.xlsx" by default. You may want to change the name to something more relevant to what your workbook contains. The File name can be changed by selecting "Book1" and then typing a new name. Do not change the file "
extension" (by default "
.xlsx"). We will see later that there we can in fact save a workbook in different formats, but keep the default for now.
If you simply opened an existing workbook in Excel, the name of the workbook will be the name of the file that you have opened. Also, if you already saved the file once already (and gave it a name), you can save it again simply by clicking on the "
Save" button. In this case Excel will not show the "
File" tab, but automatically save the file under the same name in the same folder. If you want to save this file under a different name (and/or folder), you need to explicitly click on the "
File" menu and choose "
Save As".
Remember to
save your Excel workbook regularly!
Closing Excel
To close Excel (i.e. stop the program), you simply click on the upper right corner of the window (the X shaped box).
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