Excel, as perfectly as all of the core Microsoft Place of work purposes, have long gone by means of a long time of variation upgrades. Alongside with people upgrades came modest tweaks to Excel file extensions to account for the distinctions among those Excel files.
It isn’t just model variations that spawn new file extensions. Some file extensions refer specifically to the type of file, such as whether or not it is an Excel template or an Excel file that consists of a macro.
If you comprehend all of the Excel file extensions, you will have a far better take care of on how to help you save your file in the file help you save dialogue box.
Why Excel File Extensions Subject
The extension of an Excel file offers you with crucial facts about that file before you open it. It also allows you manage the files you help you save into your directories as template information, macro-enabled data files, and much more. With just a glance at the Excel file extension, you know more about the Excel file and what it is made use of for.
Excel file extensions convey to you:
- No matter if macros or VBA is integrated
- If the file was saved with an more mature version of Excel
- Regardless of whether the file format is centered on XML files or binary
- The general legacy edition the file was saved with
- Regardless of whether the file is a template
You can see all of the file extensions in Excel by deciding on File from the menu, pick out Help save As, and then select the file sort dropdown less than the file name discipline.
As you can see, every single of the file forms have a descriptive title that allows with understanding what the file extension is for.
Excel File Extensions By Version
The initially team of file extensions are linked generally to which version of Excel the worksheet was saved with. The following extension forms are related to the Excel versions revealed in this article:
- Excel 97-2003: *.xls
- Excel 97-2003 template: *.xlt
- XML Spreadsheet 2003: *.xml
- Microsoft Excel 5./95 Workbook: *.xls
- Excel 97-2003 Incorporate-in: *.xlam
- Excel 4.: *.xlw
- Microsoft Operates: *.xlr
As you can see, the *.xls file extension is the default legacy Excel format for all variations of excel prior to Excel 2007.
From Excel 2007 onwards, the default file extension for any Excel file was (and continues to be) *.xlsx.
The Differences Involving XLS Vs XLSX
While Microsoft switching to the XLSX extension right after Excel 2007 looks like a superficial naming convention modify, the real truth is that there was extra transform than just the file extension.
XLS shops Excel spreadsheets in a file structure regarded as Binary Interchange File Structure. This was a proprietary file structure made by Microsoft.
With the launch of Excel 2007, Microsoft altered the default to XLSX, which is based on the Office environment Open XML format. This is a strategy of saving spreadsheet facts in an XML file.
What had been the pros of switching to this new process of preserving Excel spreadsheet info? There are numerous.
- Interoperable: Office environment Open XML formatted files can a lot more very easily be pulled into other applications that can read Workplace XML formats.
- Extensible: Exterior purposes or programs can manipulate the contents of the underlying XML format — this signifies programmers can create software package to edit Excel spreadsheets with no ever opening the Excel software itself.
- Safer from corruption: XML formatted documents are much less inclined to corruption or problems than binary documents like XLS files are.
- Scaled-down: You can keep additional details in a smaller sized file when you use the XLSX structure. Microsoft promises XLSX information are 75 percent smaller sized than XLS files.
If none of people rewards subject significantly to you, then you may possibly be far better off remaining with the more mature default XLS Excel format. You do get two rewards when you do this.
The initially is that XLS documents tend to conserve and open up speedier. Next, Excel information with the XLS extension can be opened on every variation of Excel, no make any difference how aged.
Other Excel File Extensions
Now that you have an understanding of the big difference concerning XLS and XLSX, it is a minor bit easier to decipher what all of the other Excel file extensions imply.
- .xlsm: XML structure Excel data files that also help Excel macros
- .xlsb: Binary structure Excel information (more mature variation) that also support Excel macros
- .xltx: An Excel file saved as a template to be used as a starting off stage for long run Excel workbooks
- .xltm: A macro-enabled Excel file that’s saved as a template
Excel Template Data files
If you’re unfamiliar with Excel templates, it may well be a fantastic time to discover about and start out applying them. If you uncover oneself building a ton of spreadsheets that share the same formatting, formulas, or structure, a template can help save you a great deal of time.
All you have to do to make a template is established up your formatting, layouts, and other features of your worksheet that you really don’t want to recreate each individual time. Then help you save the file with a person of the Excel file extensions outlined previously mentioned for template format.
In simple fact, when you open up a new file in Excel, you can look for via countless numbers of premade templates across many types.
Opening Other File Sorts
Excel isn’t limited to opening only documents with Excel file extensions. When you open a file in Excel and pick from the file form drop box, you’ll see a prolonged list outside of what is detailed in this write-up.
This is simply because there are non-Microsoft file formats that are also supported in Excel.
- *.xml: Any spreadsheets from apps that stored the sheets in XML Spreadsheet 2003 structure, or straight XML formatted facts documents.
- *.prn: Lotus spreadsheets
- .txt: Tab-delimited or Unicode textual content documents
- .csv: Comma-delimited text information
- .dif: Details Interchange Format textual content data files
- .slk: Symbolic Url Format text files
- .dbf: dBase info files
- .ods: Opendocument spreadsheets (Google Docs or OpenOffice)
- .pdf: Retains the formatting of information when you open PDF data data files
- .xps: XML Paper Specification data documents
Maintain in mind that based on the Excel edition you’re working with, not all of these file kinds will exhibit as alternatives when you are preserving or opening documents.
