Excel, like all Office Applications, is highly customizable. This means that you can change menus, toolbars, and other user interface options quite easily. (In fact, you can make Excel look completely different if you want to.)
As you make changes to your toolbars, Excel keeps track of the changes in a special file that has the extension .xlb. Depending on your version of Excel and the operating system you are using, the file could be called Excel.xlb, Excel10.xlb, Excel11.xlb, or even yourname.xlb (where yourname is your system login name).
The contents of the .xlb file are updated whenever you quit your Excel session. It is interesting to note that this particular filename extension is only used by Excel for this one file. This means that it is very easy to locate the file using the Find File feature of Windows, and then copy the file to a safe location. (The file can be in different locations, depending on your Excel version and your operating system version.)
It is a good practice to periodically make backups of the .xlb file and store them in a safe place. If, at some later time, your toolbars become corrupted in Excel, you can quit the program and copy the backup version of your .xlb file over the top of the corrupted file. This should then restore everything to the proper state when you again start Excel.
As a side note, if you wanted to get rid of all your customizations at once, you could simply rename or delete the .xlb file. The next time you restart Excel, it recreates the file for you using default settings.
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2018-01-23 01:29:46
ben
*NOTE - my previous comment had an error.
it is not the AppData/Roaming path but the AppData/Local
so for the ribbon file for excel:
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\Excel.officeUI
2018-01-23 01:24:26
ben
this information is WRONG for Excel 2016..
If you delete the .xlb file there is no change to the ribbon. (for extra tabs and customisation)
the correct file is "Excel.officeUI" and it is located in
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office
cheers
Ben
2017-06-09 10:56:01
Hello Allen.
Let me first thank you for your useful tips, over the years I have used many of them!
I'm using a MBP, Sierra 10.12.5 and Excel 2011.
Just wiped off my HD and installed Sierra from scratch. I made backups before.
After reinstalling the OS I tried to get back to my old toolbars.
There were no *.xlb in my computer (neither searching "This Mac" nor my library) except 2 NeoOffice files.
Even when I found the "Microsoft Excel Toolbars" and replaced the new one with the older one from the backup it didn't help.
The only way I succeeded was: opening both the older and the newer "Microsoft Excel Toolbars" files in TextEdit (I guess any other editor would work, but I just wanted to make sure there are no "interferences") (formatting and so), erasing content in newer and pasting all the text from the older to the newer, saving and... there were my old toolbars!
Not sure if it's required, but I restarted the computer after every change I made.
The "Microsoft Excel Toolbars" file is located in Users/Your username/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Preferences/Office 2011/
Thanks.
Saul
2016-08-16 11:42:02
Sean
WHERE is it stored though?
Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.
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