You shouldn't ever see book.xlt when you start excel.

I could see a workbook named book.xlt if I saved it as a normal workbook with
the name of "book.xlt"--but this isn't a template. And I had to go out of my
way to save it with that name. I used "book.xlt" with the quotes in the
File|saveas dialog.

If you open excel and put this in A1 of that book.xlt
=CELL("filename",A1)
what do you see?

When I saved a workbook (a normal workbook), but used a name of "book.xlt" into
my XLStart folder, I saw this:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data
\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\[book.xlt]Sheet1

Another problem that might have occured: You saved the file as book.xlt (but
the real name was book.xlt.xls and you don't show the file extension.

If you do that =cell("filename",a1) and see something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data
\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\[book.xlt.xls]Sheet1

That could be the problem.

I like to always see the file extensions. In winXP, I can toggle that setting
via:

open Windows explorer
tools|Folder options|view tab
uncheck "hide extensions for known file types"

So you should be able to save the file as book.xlt (make sure you choose
"Template (*.xlt)" in that "save as type:" box.

======
More things to check....

Depending on how you upgraded excel, you can have multiple XLStart folders. I
try to use the one that excel thinks is "current".

With Excel open
hit the alt-f11 key (gets you to the VBE)
then hit ctrl-g (gets you to the immediate window)
type this and hit enter
?application.startuppath

I get this with xl2003 and winXP home:
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

I'd close excel and find all of them:
windows start button|Search
Look for XLStart
and delete all of them--except for the one that excel thought was current.

(move the files in those folder to someplace safe--just in case there's
something you want to keep.)

Then back to excel and create your book.xlt and save it to that folder.

And if you create another workbook named sheet.xlt, then all the new sheets
added to existing workbooks will use that as their template.

I click on the New icon (like Gord) to use book.xlt as the template.


Vincnet. wrote:

Hi Dave,
I was very interested in your post. I've tried to save a customized template
named "book.xlt" in my folder XLStart (the one under the Program Files
folder), and I've been surprised to see a book.xlT when opening XL.
Furthermore, when I insert a sheet, or when I create a new workbook, the new
items are not customized but use the "standard" parameters of XL... Have you
any clue which could explain that?
Thanks
--
CU

V.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

If you start a new workbook and change the page layout (for all the sheets), you
can save it into your XLStart folder as Book.xlt.

Excel will use that as the basis for new workbooks.

You can change a lot of settings that way--including orientation,
headers/footers....

Amjad wrote:

How to change the default printing parameters on Excel & keep them changed
for future workbooks.

Example: Normally I use Printing margins 0.25 on all directions, but
default printing margins are 0.75. I want to change them to set 0.25 as
DEFAULT.

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson