"Peter K" wrote in message
...
Thxs, Bob.

You are apparently still under Win XP. My copy of the .xlsb file is in
the
corresponding Vista folder.

Based on your reply, I had an idea: I deleted all personal.xls files,
including shortcuts, except for the one in the Office 12\Xlstart folder.


Indeed I am, and that is the way it is going to stay. I see no reason to go
Vista.


Then I opened a new document, opened Visual Basic & that personal.xls
file,
still .xls, not xlsx, was there. I made a minor change in it (dummy
change
would be OK.) As I saved it, in the project pane 'personal.xls' changed
to
'personal.xls (persoal.xlsb)', implying the .xlsb file had been created.

I doubt that it really is a binary file & I have no idea why MS would want
to save the personal.xl* file in binary form or why they use the file
exension for binary files.


I would think it is, the binary file type loads much faster, and is useful
for that purpose.