NOVEMBER 2017
6
Excel templates: Using pre-built workbooks
By Arnold Villeneuve
Every Microsoft Office application
leverages templates to help users
achieve greater results faster and
more efficiently. Excel templates are
workbooks that have been pre-built
for a specific purpose. Microsoft offers
thousands of its own Excel templates
that are free for you to use.
If you were thinking of building an
Excel workbook for a specific purpose,
chances are that a template already
exists either from Microsoft or from
another Excel user that has uploaded
to the internet to share with others.
The Featured Excel templates are the
ones Microsoft offers. The Personal
Excel templates are the ones you
create yourself and save as an Excel
template format.
Continued on page 7
Online, you don't have to start from scratch if you start
with a free template from Office.com. Choose from an
assortment of templates like calendars, invoices, and
budget planning. Try this now:
1. Go to Office.com.
2. Click Templates at the top of the page.
3. On the Templates page, click Excel.
TIP: To see more templates, under BROWSE BY CATEGORY, click the
category (like Calendars) that you want to see.
4. Click the template you want, click Open in Excel.
TIP: If you don't like the name of the template (usually Book 1), click the
name in the Excel Online title bar at the top of the page and type a differ-
ent name.
Customize the Excel Workbook you created from a
Template and save it as a new Personal Template
Once you have selected an Excel template, you can start
to customize it and make it your own. You can do brand-
ing by formatting it to fit within your organization's
style. To save an Excel workbook you created from a
Microsoft Excel Template use the following steps.
Save a workbook as a template
If you're saving a workbook to a template for the first
time, start by setting the default personal templates
location:
1. Click File > Options.
2. Click Save, and then under Save workbooks, enter the
path to the personal templates location in the Default
personal templates location box. This path is typically:
C:\Users\[UserName]\Documents\Custom Office
Templates.
3. Click OK.
Options you can set for saving workbooks
TIP: Once this option is set, all custom templates you save to the My
Templates folder automatically appear under Personal on the New page
(File > New).
4. Open the workbook you want to use as a template.
5. Click File > Export.
6. Under Export, click Change File Type.
7. In the Workbook File Types box, double-click Tem-
plate.
8. In the File name box, type the name you want to use
for the template.
9. Click Save, and then close the template.
