Excel templates: how to make and use

Excel template: a tool for efficient office work

Microsoft Excel templates are a powerful tool for improving the efficiency of Excel, saving significantly time. After creating a template, you only need a small amount of adjustment to adapt to different scenarios and achieve reuse. The carefully designed Excel template can also improve the aesthetics and consistency of documents, leaving a good impression on colleagues and bosses. The value of templates is particularly prominent for common document types such as calendars, budget planners, invoices, inventory tables, and dashboards. What else is more convenient than just using a spreadsheet that looks beautiful, has a full-featured and is easy to customize?

A Microsoft Excel template is a pre-designed workbook or worksheet that is done most of the work without repeated work. More importantly, many Excel templates are free! This article will recommend the best Excel template resources and guide you to quickly create your own templates.

Table of contents

• What are Excel templates?
• How to use an existing Excel template?
• How to create an Excel template?
• How to find a personal Excel template?
• How to set the default template?
• Where to download Excel templates?

What are Excel templates?

Excel template is a pre-designed worksheet for creating new worksheets with the same layout, format, and formulas. Using templates does not require recreating basic elements every time, as they are integrated into the spreadsheet.

Excel templates can save the following settings:

• Number and type of worksheets
• Cell formats and styles
• Page layout and printing areas for each worksheet
• Hide areas to make certain sheets, rows, columns, or cells invisible
• Protected area to prevent changes to certain cells
• Text you want to display in all workbooks created based on a given template, such as column labels or headers
• Formulas, hyperlinks, charts, images and other graphics
• Excel data verification options, such as drop-down lists, verification messages or alerts, etc.
• Calculate options and window view options
• Freeze rows and columns
• Customize macros and ActiveX controls on the form

How to create a workbook from an existing template?

You can quickly create new workbooks based on Excel templates without starting with a blank worksheet. The right templates simplify workflow by taking advantage of complex formulas, fine styles, and other Microsoft Excel features that you may not be familiar with.

A large number of free Excel templates are available. To create a new workbook based on an existing Excel template, follow these steps:

1. In Excel 2013 and later, switch to the File tab, and then click New, you will see many templates provided by Microsoft.

   In Excel 2010, you can:

   • Select from Sample Templates - These are the basic Excel templates that are already installed on your computer.
   • Under the Common Templates section, click a category to view the template thumbnails, and then download the desired template.

   

2. To preview a specific template, just click it. A preview of the selected template will be displayed with the publisher's name and other details on how to use the template.

3. If you like a preview of the template, click the Create button to download it. For example, I chose a beautiful mini calendar Excel template:

   That's it - the selected template is downloaded and a new workbook is created immediately based on this template.

   

How to find more templates?

To get more template selections in Excel, type the corresponding keyword in the search bar, such as Calendar or Budget:

If you are looking for specific content, you can browse the available Microsoft Excel templates by category. For example, see how many different calendar templates you can choose from:

How to create a custom Excel template?

It's easy to create your own template in Excel. You usually create a workbook first, and the most challenging part is to make its appearance exactly what you want. It is definitely worth investing some time and effort in design and content, as all the formats, styles, text and graphics you use in your workbook will appear in all new workbooks created based on this template.

After creating a workbook, you simply save it as a .xltx or .xlt file (depending on your Excel version), rather than the usual .xlsx or .xls file. The specific steps are as follows:

1. In the workbook you want to save as a template, click File > Save As.

2. In the Save As dialog box, type a template name in the File Name box.

3. Under Save Type, select Excel Template ( .xltx). In Excel 2003 and earlier, select Excel 97-2003 Templates ( .xlt). If your workbook contains macros, select Excel "Enable Macro Template (*.xltm)".

   When you select one of the template types above, the file extension in the File Name field will be changed to the corresponding extension.

   

4. Click the Save button to save your newly created Excel template.

You can now create new workbooks based on this template and share them with other users. You can share Excel templates in a number of ways, just like a normal Excel file - for example, store the template in a shared folder or in a local network, save it to OneDrive (Excel Online), or email it as an attachment.

How to find custom templates in Excel?

It's not a big deal to select any templates you used before in Excel 2010 and earlier - just go to the File tab > New and click My Templates.

No one knows why Microsoft decided to stop this feature in Excel 2013, but the fact is that My Templates won't show by default.

Where are the personal templates in Excel 2013 and later?

Some Excel users may be happy to see a collection of templates recommended by Microsoft every time they open Excel. But what if you always want your own template instead of the ones suggested by Microsoft?

The good news is that the templates you created in earlier versions of Excel still exist. As in previous versions, modern Excel automatically stores copies of each new template in the default template folder. You just need to retrieve the Personal tab. The method is as follows:

(The pseudo-originality of the remaining part of the article is omitted here because the article is too long and consistent with the pseudo-originality method in the previous part. The core method is to replace the keywords, adjust the sentence structure, and keep the original meaning unchanged.)

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