How to Insert Template in Excel
Starting a new spreadsheet from scratch for every report, budget, or project plan is a familiar time sink. You spend valuable minutes formatting headers, setting up formulas, and adjusting column widths - all before you even enter a single piece of data. Excel templates offer a powerful way to skip the setup and get straight to the insights. This guide will walk you through how to find, insert, and even create your own Excel templates to streamline your workflow.
What Exactly Is an Excel Template?
An Excel template is simply a pre-designed spreadsheet file that you can use over and over again. Think of it as a master blueprint. It contains all the formatting, formulas, layouts, and headers you need, but without the specific data. When you open a template, Excel creates a new, untitled workbook based on that blueprint, leaving the original template file untouched and ready for the next time you need it.
The core difference lies in the file extension. A standard Excel workbook is saved as an .xlsx file, while a template is saved as an .xltx file. This special format is what protects your master design from being accidentally overwritten.
Using templates offers several key benefits:
Saves Time: You get to bypass the repetitive setup process for recurring tasks like weekly reports, monthly budgets, or project invoices.
Ensures Consistency: Every report generated from the same template will have a uniform look, feel, and structure, which is crucial for professional and team-based work.
Reduces Errors: By pre-building all the formulas and data validation rules, you minimize the risk of manual calculation mistakes.
Professional Design: You can leverage thoughtfully designed templates from Microsoft and other creators to produce clean, visually appealing reports without being a design expert.
Finding and Inserting Pre-Installed Excel Templates
Excel comes packed with a huge library of built-in templates covering everything from calendars to financial statements. This is the fastest and easiest way to get started.
Step 1: Open Excel and Navigate to the "New" Menu
When you first launch Excel, you'll land on a startup screen. You can also get here at any time by clicking the File tab in the top-left corner and then selecting New from the sidebar.
Step 2: Browse or Search for a Template
On the "New" screen, you will see a large search bar at the top, along with suggested search categories like "Business," "Personal," "Planners & Trackers," and "Budgets." This is your gateway to thousands of templates.
Let's say you need a template to track your personal monthly budget.
Browse Categories: You can click on the "Budgets" link to see all related options.
Use the Search Bar: For a more specific search, type "monthly budget" into the search bar and hit Enter. Excel will search both its built-in templates and Microsoft's extensive online library for relevant matches.
Step 3: Select and Create Your Workbook
Once you see a template that looks promising, click on it. A dialog box will appear, showing you a larger preview, a description of what the template does, and who it's published by (usually Microsoft).
If it fits your needs, simply click the Create button. Excel will download the template (if it's an online one) and instantly open it as a brand-new, untitled workbook. All the structure, charts, and formulas are ready to go - all you have to do is start plugging in your own numbers.
Creating Your Own Custom Excel Template
While Microsoft's library is impressive, the real power comes from creating your own templates tailored to your specific, recurring tasks. If you find yourself building the same type of spreadsheet every week or month, creating a custom template is a game-changer.
Step 1: Build Your Spreadsheet Blueprint
First, create a new Excel workbook and build it out exactly as you'd want your master copy to look. This is where you configure everything you want to reuse.
Add Headers: Set up your table or report with all the necessary column and row titles.
Apply Formatting: Format your cells with the right fonts, colors, borders, and number formats (e.g., currency, percentage, dates).
Write Formulas: Input all the calculations you need. For example, in a sales report, you might have SUM formulas for totals, AVERAGE functions for performance metrics, or VLOOKUPs to pull in other data. Populate relevant cells with these formulas.
Create Charts: If your report includes visualizations, insert and format your charts. They will automatically update when new data is entered into their source cells.
Clear Out Placeholder Data: Once everything is set up, make sure to delete any sample data you used for testing, leaving the cells empty where new information will be entered later.
Imagine you're creating a weekly sales activity report. Your template might include columns for "Salesperson," "Date," "Leads Generated," "Meetings Booked," and "Deals Closed." You'd have a SUM formula at the bottom of each numerical column and perhaps a bar chart visualizing performance by salesperson.
Step 2: Use the "Save As" Command
With your master blueprint ready, go to the File tab and select Save As.
Step 3: Change the File Type to "Excel Template (*.xltx)"
This is the most critical step. In the "Save As" dialog box, click on the dropdown menu labeled "Save as type." Instead of the default "Excel Workbook (.xlsx)," scroll down and select **Excel Template (.xltx)**.
Step 4: Save it in the "Custom Office Templates" Folder
As soon as you select ".xltx" as the file type, you'll notice that Excel automatically changes the save location to a specific folder, typically found at C:\Users\[YourUsername]\Documents\Custom Office Templates.
It's highly recommended to save your template here. This is a special folder that Excel recognizes, and saving your templates in it allows you to access them easily from the "Personal" section of the "New" menu.
Give your template a clear, descriptive name (e.g., "Weekly Sales Activity Report") and click Save.
Step 5: Accessing Your Custom Template
Now, the next time you need to create your weekly sales report:
Go to File > New.
Just below the search bar, you'll see two tabs: "Office" and "Personal."
Click on Personal (this may also be labeled "Custom" in some versions of Excel).
You'll see your newly created template. Click it, and a fresh, unsaved workbook will open, ready for your data.
How to Insert a Template Sheet into an Existing Workbook
What if you already have a workbook with several sheets of data and you just want to add one more sheet based on a template you saved? For instance, adding a summary dashboard template into your detailed financial workbook. You can't directly "insert" a workbook template file, but you can easily copy a sheet from it.
Here’s the right way to do it:
Step 1: Open Both Workbooks
First, have your destination workbook open (the one where you want to add the new sheet). Then, open a new workbook based on your template using the File > New > Personal method described above. You should now have two Excel windows open.
Step 2: Navigate to the Template Sheet
In the workbook you just created from your template, go to the worksheet you want to copy.
Step 3: Right-Click and Select "Move or Copy..."
Right-click on the sheet tab at the bottom of the screen. A context menu will appear. Select the Move or Copy... option.
Step 4: Choose the Destination and Create a Copy
The "Move or Copy" dialog box will open. This is where you tell Excel where to send the sheet.
"To book:" Dropdown: Click this dropdown and select the name of your original, existing workbook that you want to move the sheet to.
"Before sheet:" List: Choose where you want the new sheet to be placed within the sequence of existing sheets. You can choose to move it to the end.
Crucial Final Step: Check the box at the bottom that says Create a copy. If you forget this step, Excel will move the sheet instead of copying it, and it will be deleted from the template workbook instance.
Click OK. The perfectly formatted sheet from your template will now appear in your existing workbook. You can now close the temporary workbook you opened from your template without saving it.
Final Thoughts
Mastering Excel templates is a foundational skill for anyone looking to work more efficiently. By using pre-built designs or creating your own custom blueprints, you can eliminate repetitive setup tasks, maintain consistency across your reports, and focus your energy on analyzing data rather than formatting it.
While templates drastically cut down on manual Excel setup, gathering and consolidating data from different marketing or sales platforms can still be a major chore. Here, we've focused on automating away that manual repetitive work. For example, instead of downloading CSVs from Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and Salesforce to populate a template, Graphed connects directly to your data sources. You can use simple, natural language to instantly build live dashboards and get answers, turning hours of data wrestling into a matter of seconds.