When you selected "new" in the file menu Excel 2000 used to display all
avaiable templates both locally and in a specified workgroup location much in
the same way as Word.

It *was* possible throught the now defunct office shortcut bar to customize
an alternate startup file location/user templates location.

Excel 2003 seems to lack this capacity to rapidly access a centralized store
of templates as a default. This is a major ommission as I am certain many
companies rely on employeess accessing a standardized template set, instead
of the default Excel ones. Everything in 2003 seems geared to web
collaboration--a feature that doesn't really seem to be very useful and way
beyond the scope of most users.

Let me be clear--I do not need to open these files at startup--just display
them in the "new" pane like it did in 2000, or even make the location appear
in the infuriating task pane on the right.

Any ideas on how to achieve thsi apparently simple task?