In this video, we're going to learn how to manage and access files efficiently. The first very important distinction that needs to be made is the difference between Save, and save as, if you move to file, you'll notice that there are two options, save, or Save As. When pressing save, Excel simply overwrites the previous version of that particular file, which means that any information that was contained in a previous version has now been lost and has been overwritten with the new information that you've just saved. Most people know the shortcut for save is Ctrl N s. But how do you manage the process of making slight changes to a given spreadsheet, but try to keep intact any previous changes that you've made. So for example, adding a second version of a file, but keeping version one, completely intact and not overwritten? All you need to do is use the Save As command.
Because this allows us to take the existing file and save it as something else, either changing the name or changing the file top or the location. And the best shortcut for this is simply to hit F 12. f 12 key will open up the Save As dialog box. In terms of being able to manage your files efficiently, you must use a name that is indicative of the type of information that is contained within that file. A common worst practice involves when people open up a brand new workbook and then they simply save it and leave the name of books seven or whatever other generic name Excel the suns in a year's time when you are looking for a certain piece of information, you will not have any clue as to what book seven contains within it. So using a name that is descriptive will definitely help Secondly, the File tab is particularly important, depending on the top of content you have within the workbook.
If you need to use macros, you must use a macro enabled workbook. And in future videos, we discuss many of these different file types. The standard is simply an XLS x workbook. And lastly, the location you need to use a location is going to help you remember where this file is saved in the future. In other words, practice is simply saving all of your documents under the My Documents folder. You need to use the Windows file and folder structure to create a dedicated path, which once again, is descriptive of the information that has been saved within it.
So if I was going to make any changes to this particular file, I could simply keep everything intact. That save it. For example, as version two, this will keep the original file intact. actually creating a brand new document. You'll notice that if you do create a brand new workbook, and even try and press Ctrl S, that will bring up the Save As dialog box. Because until such time as you provided a workbook with a particular name, location and file top, Excel cannot save over it will first prompt you to use the Save as feature and thereafter, you can simply hit Ctrl S to save and then some efficiency relating to accessing recent files.
Once again, by clicking on File, you'll find an option called Open. Now this open tab has a list of all of your recently open files grouped by date. In addition to the grouping, you can actually pin atoms that you use very commonly. I can click on the pin on the right hand side that moves the atom up to the pinned portion of the screen. Which means even if I only accessed this file a year ago, it will be here at the top of the list ready and waiting to be opened. The rest of the list will change as the different files that are open, replace these less recently open files.
You can change the number of files you see in this list by moving to excel options and moving to advanced and scrolling down until the display group, and you can set the number of recent workbooks that you'd like to see. In addition to this, if you have Excel stored on your taskbar, you can actually right click on Excel and see a list of all of the recent files and go through the exact same process of printing these items. And it's important to know that this list is completely independent of the list that you'll find within Excel. And lastly, if you're using Office 365 across multiple devices, and you are too saving these documents within OneDrive, which is Microsoft's Cloud Storage. The list of recent documents will actually travel across devices, which can be quite useful. So these have just been a few important concepts as well as some techniques to manage, organize, and access your files efficiently.
We'll see in the next video