Discussion on:

Reduce start up tasks by customizing the way Excel launches

At work, I frequently open spreadsheets with links to two other reference spreadsheets. In my experience, links sometimes have hiccups when the source spreadsheets are not open prior to opening the spreadsheet I want to work with.

I created a workspace (found on the View tab in Excel 2010) using the two reference spreadsheets, then made a shortcut to that workspace that I keep on my desktop (WinXP.) I open it first before opening any spreadsheets that link to either of the reference spreadsheets. No more hiccups.

You can use the workspaces feature to open multiple files when Excel launches. Once you have all of the files open that you want Excel to open upon startup, go to the View tab and select Save Workspace. Save the workspace in the appropriate startup folder, as outlined in Susan's article. Next time you launch Excel, it will automatically open the files associated with that workspace.

Can this be done with Word as well? I assumed it could since I found the following folder in the file structure: C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP. When I saved my file there, it wasn't automatically opened when I launched Word. Any ideas? Additionally, Word doesn't appear to have the workspaces functionality. Am I overlooking something?

If you save the same template as Sheet.xltx it will use the same formatting every time you create a new sheet. This way I ensure, for example, that if I create a simple spreadsheet and print it, it does at least come out landscape with a simple but useful header and footer. The standard portrait formatting that you get with Excel is almost never what I want.

(If working in a different language, the standard names are different: Buch.xltx and Tabelle.xltx work for German)

The other thing to go into my XLStart is Personal.xlsm with some useful little macros that I use all the time. This works best if the file is set up to be hidden so it is not confused with what you are really working on.

By the way, I always use the "Open with no Workbook" option. More often than not, I will be working on an existing Excel file and do not want always to have to close an empty workbook just to get it out of the way.

In Windows 7 the path will be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\XLSTART

But if there are more than one user it is preferable to use the path under the user path:
C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

Also I am not a network specialist but the fact that Roaming is in the past may suggest that if a user log in another PC his/her setup will follow.