Excel File Question

[Maurice]

Rarely use Excel and would ask what is the difference between an excel
spreadsheet and a workbook. Much thanks for an informed response.

 

[RonaldoOneNil]

Its just terminology. People call an excel file a workbook or a spreadsheet.
I tend to think that a spreadsheet is one tab of information in a workbook,
so a workbook is a collection of related spreadsheets.

 

[Pete_UK]

When Excel first came out the files consisted of a single sheet, hence
the use of the term spreadsheet to refer to a file. Later versions
(from 95 or 97 onwards) had the capability of having multiple sheets
in one file, so the term workbook refers to an Excel file, which can
contain one or more worksheets. People still use the term spreadsheet
to refer to a file, but this can be misleading.

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

[Gord Dibben]

Back in the early days when the generic term "spreadsheet" was coined it
referred to a type of application like VisiCalc that used the rows and
columns method of visually displaying calculations.

http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html


When Excel came out with workbooks that contained multiple worksheets the
term "spreadsheet" got kind of confusing.

In Excel a file is a workbook which can contain multiple worksheets.

Still a "spreadsheet" type of application.

When posting questions about Excel it is always best to use the terms
workbook and worksheet.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP