Difference between Excel Workbook and Worksheet

An Excel Workbook is basically an Excel file. The terms Excel Workbook and Excel file are both used interchangeably.

An Excel file (or Excel Workbook) contains one or more Excel Worksheets. An Excel user usually works inside an Excel Worksheet. An Excel Worksheet is where you can find grid of Excel Cells. An Excel cell is where we can store data (a text data, a currency data, a number data or a formula).

Below image shows Excel Worksheets inside an Excel Workbook.

A user creates and edits data inside Excel Worksheets. An Excel Workbook holds one or more Excel Worksheets together. When you create a new Excel Workbook, it has a single worksheet. The default name of a new Excel Workbook is "Book1" and the default name of first Excel worksheet is "Sheet1". User can change the default names later.

Minimum one Excel Worksheet is required in an Excel Workbook. You cannot delete the last Worksheet from an Excel Workbook. Following error message will appear if you try to delete the last Worksheet from an Excel Workbook.

"A workbook must contain at least one visible worksheet"

In earlier versions of Excel (before Excel 2013), each Excel Workbook opened inside a single Excel window (called as Multiple Document Interface (MDI)).

From Excel 2013, each Excel Workbook opens in its own separate window (called as Single Document Interface (SDI)). Single Document Interface (SDI) allows each Excel Workbook to open in its own window. Each Excel Workbook is shown separately on Windows taskbar.

From Excel 2007, the standard file extension of Excel Files (Excel Workbooks) is .xlsx. In Excel versions before Excel 2007, the standard file extension was .xls.

Click following link to know more about Excel File Formats .