Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac Step by Step

Create a Basic Workbook

The basic file you create in Excel 2008 for Mac is a workbook, saved in the Excel Workbook (.xlsx) file format. If your workbook content warrants it, you can save a workbook in a binary file format (to aid compatibility with previous versions) or macro-enabled file format (to enable macros within the workbook). These files are also referred to as workbooks. In this chapter, we examine simple workbooks in which you store, manage, calculate, and present simple data. (Don’t worry—we’re saving the hard bits for later chapters.)

One thing that is simpler in Excel than in Word is that you can create only one type of workbook by clicking the New button—a blank workbook. You don’t need to choose a specific type of workbook or worry ...