Excel templates are universally useful—they can help you keep your finances in order, manage a project, and organize your life. Of course, Excel has plenty of ready-to-go templates that you can use instead of starting from scratch every time. But if you can’t find a template that fits your needs, you should create your own.

Why Create a Custom Excel Template?

Excel templates can be used for just about anything. A lot of people use them to keep track of personal finance, but Excel has many other potential uses.

You could whip up a template to help you keep track of books and games you've loaned out each month, for example. Or to manage an invite list for regular parties. You can use Excel templates to keep track of your health and fitness, so your motivation doesn’t diminish and stop you from reaching your fitness goals.

Excel templates list

You can choose from pre-made options, but if you know how to edit them or create your own from scratch, you'll get even more out of Excel templates.

You'll benefit most from creating a custom template, if you have to create the same spreadsheet over and over again, like a monthly report or a weekly calendar. But even if you only have to create a spreadsheet once a year, creating a template for it could save you some time.

How to Create an Excel Template From Scratch

You can create an Excel template for anything. From keeping track of which of your books you’ve lent to organizing your life. For this example, we’ll be making a monthly book-lending spreadsheet to show you how the process works. Let's get started!

We’ll include the following information to make the template efficient: the name of the month, the name of the lent book, the person I lent it to, the date they took it, the date they promised it back, how many days they have left, and the number of books that are currently out:

Create your own Excel template

The month, days left, and the number of books that are currently out on loan have all been calculated using formulas. Just to make sure it's working, let's put in some data.

Create your own Excel template

How to Save Your Custom Template in Excel

After clearing out the information that doesn't need to be there (books, lendees, and dates), we can save it as a template. Hit File > Save As and select Excel Template (.xltx) in the Format drop-down. The location dropdown will automatically change to the My Templates folder, which is where you want it to be.

Save Excel template

How to Open a Template in Excel

Now, when you want to open up a blank copy of the template, just go to File > New and select Personal from the list of available templates.

Open custom Excel template

Now you'll have a fresh copy of the worksheet that you created and saved, ready to be used, and without having to create all of your column headers and formulas again.

Depending on your version of Excel, this process might differ slightly, but it should be pretty easy to figure out how to open a template.

Turn a Worksheet Into a Template in Excel

Creating a spreadsheet from scratch for a template is easy, but you can just as easily turn an existing sheet into a template. Just delete any information that you don't want to be included in the template, leave everything else, and save it as a new template in the same way as explained above.

Edit an Excel template

For example, if you download a personal budget spreadsheet, and it includes a line for a mortgage, but you don't have a mortgage, you could delete that or replace it with something else and then save it as a template, saving you the time of customizing it every month. (Just be sure that anything you delete isn't going to change how the included formulas work.)

How to Make Excel Open the Template by Default

You might have created a template to save time while working in Excel. Now, if you often need to load that template, you can increase your productivity and have Excel open the template automatically.

To do it, you’ll have to copy and paste the template into Excel’s XLSTART folder. Depending on your operating system and Office version, it might be located in a different location, so it might be difficult to manually find it. The easiest way is to check Excel’s Trust Center. Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Go to File > Options.
  2. From the left-hand menu, select Trust Center.
  3. Click the Trust Center Settings button.
  4. Open Trusted Locations.
  5. From the User Locations list, locate and open the C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\ option.
  6. Click the Browse button.
  7. Copy and paste your custom-made template.
Launch Excel template every time

How to Open the Same Template for Every User in Excel

If you switch between multiple accounts on your computer, you can still have Excel open the same template every time. Go through the above steps and, at step 5, locate and open the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\XLSTART\ option. Then, go through the remaining instructions.

If you no longer want Excel to launch the same template every time, access the XLSTART folder and delete the folder.

Download & Customize Off-the-Shelf Templates

If you don't have a worksheet, you can turn it into a custom template. You can also use an off-the-shelf template and customize it to your needs. You can find free templates at the following resources:

Microsoft Office also features free templates. In Excel, you see a selection of templates whenever you go to open a new document. You can use the search for online templates search box to find what you need. Or you can browse all templates available for Excel at templates.office.com.

Use Your Best Excel Templates

As you can see, making an Excel template is an easy process that could save you a ton of time in the long run, especially if you find yourself recreating the same spreadsheet on a weekly or even daily basis. Now that you can easily use the Excel template, you could try more ways to save time while working in Excel.