Opening a Workspace Whenever Excel Launches

When you know that you'll be using a particular workspace for some time in your Excel work, you can speed up the process of setting up your work environment by having Excel automatically open the workspace file when you launch the program. The process for doing this is twofold: You need to designate a folder on your computer as the alternate startup folder, and then you have to save the workspace file in that folder.

Any Excel file that you save in the XLSTART folder provided by Microsoft (and saved in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11 folder when you're using Excel 2003) automatically opens when you launch the program.

Excel enables you to designate an alternate folder (which you must create with Windows Explorer) for automatic startup. Saving the workspace file you want automatically opened in the alternate startup folder that you specify because no matter where you put this folder it just has to be easier to find than Microsoft's XLSTART folder!

To designate a folder (which you've already created on your system with Windows Explorer) as the alternate startup folder, follow these few steps:

1. Choose Tools → Options and then select the General tab in the Options dialog box.
2. Select the At Startup, Open All Files In text box and then enter the path to the folder where you're going to save your workspace file.
3. Unfortunately, Excel doesn't provide a Browse button here that enables you to locate this folder visually, so you have to tough it out and type the folder's pathname in this text box. Remember that the pathname consists of the drive letter followed by a colon and the names of all the subfolders separated by backslashes.
4. Click OK to close the Options dialog box.

After you designate your alternate startup folder, follow these steps to save the workspace file that you want Excel to automatically open on startup:

1. Choose File → Save Workspace to open the Save Workspace dialog box.
2. From the Save In drop-down list box, select the folder you designated as the alternate startup folder.
3. Click Save to close the Save Workspace dialog box.

After you save the workspace file in your Excel alternate startup folder, each time you start Excel the program opens the file and uses its information to load your workbook files, arrange their windows, and invoke their display settings.

When you finish your work with the workbooks opened in the workspace and no longer want to see them every time you launch Excel, you need to move the workspace file out of the alternate startup folder into another folder on your hard disk, or, if you're really sure that you have no need for the workspace, you can delete it by moving it into the Windows Recycle Bin.