Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA

Chapter 3: Understanding Excel Files

In This Chapter

• Starting Excel

• Opening and saving different types of files in Excel

• Understanding the Excel file formats

• Figuring out how Excel uses the Windows Registry

Starting Excel

You can start Excel in various ways, depending on how it's installed. You can double-click an icon on the desktop, click an icon in the taskbar, use the Windows Start button, or double-click a file associated with the Excel application. All methods ultimately launch the excel.exe executable file.

When Excel 2013 starts, it performs many actions, including the following:

• It reads its settings stored in the Windows Registry.

• It reads and applies any Quick Access toolbar or Ribbon customizations defined in the Excel.officeUI file.

• It opens the *.xlb menu/toolbar customization file if it exists.

• It opens the AutoCorrect list (and *.ACL file) if it exists.

• It opens all add-ins that are installed (that is, those that are checked in the Add-Ins dialog box).

• It opens any workbooks in the XLStart directory.

• It opens the Personal Macro Workbook (personal.xlsb) if it exists.

• It opens any workbooks that are in the alternate start-up directory (specified on the Advanced tab of the Excel Options dialog box).

• It determines whether Excel ended with a crash the last time it was used. If so, it displays a list of autorecovered workbooks.

• It displays an empty workbook — unless the user specified a workbook to open or one or more files were found in ...