Page 326 - Excel Workbook for Dummies

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Chapter 24

Top Ten Tips for Using Excel like a Pro

erforming the exercises in this workbook gives you an opportunity to work with the most
Pimportant features of the program, especially those related to building and maintaining
spreadsheets. To help you make the most of this hands-on experience, this chapter brings
together ten of the most important ways to work efficiently and design the best possible
spreadsheets as you start to work on your own.

Generate New Workbooks from Templates

Whenever possible, generate new workbooks from templates that are available for Excel.
Don’t forget the program provides you with a number of useful templates (Balance Sheet,
Expense Statement, Loan Amortization, Sales Invoice, and Timecard) all courtesy of
Spreadsheet Solutions that you can start using right out of the box. (Select File➪New, and
then click the On My Computer link in the New Workbook task pane and, finally, the
Spreadsheet Solutions tab in the Templates dialog box.)
In addition to the Spreadsheet Solution templates that are installed with Excel, you can also
go online to the Microsoft Office Templates Home Page (select File➪New, and then click
the Templates On Office Online link in the New Workbook task pane). On the Microsoft Office
Templates Home Page, click the Excel link beneath the Microsoft Office Programs heading
and then browse the different categories of Excel templates by using their links. After you
find a template you want to download, click its thumbnail to open a page showing a larger
version of the template along with its rating, number of downloads, and size. To download
the template file, click the Download Now button.

After the template is completely downloaded, Excel opens a workbook generated from the
template in its program window. You can then customize the workbook as needed before you
save the workbook as a template file in your Templates folder by selecting Template (*.xlt) as
the file type in the Save as Type drop-down list in the Save As dialog box (File➪Save As) and
removing the number from the temporary filename. Doing this adds the downloaded tem-
plate to the General tab of your Template dialog box so that you can use it to generate as
many new workbooks as you need.

If you can’t find a ready-made template online that comes close to generating the type of
spreadsheet you need, you can create your own template from a sample worksheet that you
build from scratch. In this workbook, you enter the formulas along with all standard headings
for the data table(s) that the spreadsheet requires, formatting and securing the tables as
needed. Then you save the final workbook as a template file by selecting Template (*.xlt) as
the file type in the Save As Type drop-down list in the Save As dialog box (File➪Save As).