If you do a lot of work with Excel, sooner or later you will want to be able to send your Excel data to your colleagues. You may be required to design a workbook for someone else to use, or you may need to send some data to a co worker for review. Whether the recipient is on the local office network, or a thousand miles away; if they have an e-mail address, it is easy to get your Excel data to them.

 

You can send Excel data as an e-mail message from within Excel, by choosing File->Send To->Mail Recipient, from the menu bar.

 

 

This will automatically display an e-mail interface.

 

Next, enter the e-mail address of the recipient, (you can check the Outlook address book by clicking on the address book button ) and click the Send This sheet button. When you click this button Outlook will send the worksheet as an e-mail message. The other buttons on the e-mail interface allow you to attach files, send blind copies, and set a priority level for the message.

 

Remember, that the worksheet is not sent as an attached file. The Excel data from the worksheet has been sent as a standard e-mail that can be read and edited in an e-mail program like Outlook. This is not the same as a workbook attachment that can be opened and used with Excel.

 

If you want to send an entire workbook to a recipient, you can open Outlook, and then click the create mail button.

 

 

When you are finished typing your message, click the

Attachment button, and use the insert attachment dialogue to browse to the Excel workbook of your choice.

 

 

You can send your workbook in the same way from within Excel by clicking the attachment button on the Excel e-mail interface. However, the message that will carry the attachment will be composed from the current worksheet.

 

e-mails with attached files are larger and more cumbersome than simple messages; furthermore, attachments can also carry malicious viruses and they may not be compatible with your recipient’s software. If your worksheet is sent as a basic e-mail, your recipient can view your worksheet data even if they don’t have Excel installed on their system. In this light, the ability to send Excel data as a simple message does have its advantages. However, if your recipient must be able to open, use, and modify the worksheets, you should send your workbook as an e-mail attachment.