When you work in Excel, you may find that you always use a particular collection of workbooks. In fact, you may spend the first few minutes after launching Excel opening those workbooks. A similar situation occurs when you have separate groups of related workbooks that you use at different times.

For example, you might have one collection of budget workbooks, another collection of planning workbooks, and yet another collection for an ongoing project. In these cases, you waste precious time opening the individual files you need.

Excel helps you save most of that time by enabling you to specify workspaces of files. A workspace is a collection of workbooks that Excel stores in a special .xlw file. When you open a workspace file, Excel automatically opens all the workbooks that you’ve associated with it.

Earlier versions of Excel had a Save Workspace command on the File menu. In Excel 2007, you must first add this command to the Quick Access toolbar. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Pull down the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu and then click MoreCommands. The Excel Options dialog box displays with the Customize page displayed.
2. In the Choose Command From list, click All Commands.
3. In the list of commands, click Save Workspace.
4. Click Add.
5. Click OK. Excel adds a button for the Save Workspace command to the Quick Access toolbar.

You can now save a workspace of workbooks. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Open the workbooks that you want to include in the workspace. If you have any workbooks open that you don’t want in the workspace, close them.
2. In the Quick Access toolbar, click the Save Workspace command. Excel displays the Save Workspace dialog box.
3. Select a location for the workspace file.
4. Type a File Name. (The default name is resume, but you can use any name you like.)
5. Click Save.
6. If any of the open workbooks have unsaved changes, Excel prompts you to save them. In each case, click Yes to save the changes (or click Yes to All).

The next time you run Excel, you can open the workspace by choosing Office, Open and then choosing the workspace file.

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