# Where are Excel customizations stored?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-excel-customizations-stored/263537>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 7, 2004, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-excel-customizations-stored/263537 "2004-09-07T20:56:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-excel-customizations-stored/263537/1 "2004-09-07T20:56:30Z")

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I have customizations in Excel (custom toolbar buttons) that I want to port to another machine. Where are those customizations defined? It used to be that I could do this with a file called user.xl8 where user was the user name but that seems to be outmoded on XP.

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-excel-customizations-stored/263537/2 "2004-09-08T00:57:43Z")

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Assuming you’ve got Excel 2003, the file you want is here:

```auto

C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Excel11.pip

```

I’m not sure you can safely copy that to a different Excel 2003 installation and still have it work. So make sure to back up that file on your TO machine before orverlaying the version from your FROM machine.