Closing Excel Documents Without Closing Excel

Q. I work on many Excel workbooks at the same time. Occasionally I’ll have as many as 12 open. Closing the workbooks without closing Excel entirely is a tedious job because I have to close them one at a time. I heard there’s a quick way to shut all of them with a single click. Is that a myth?

A. No, it’s a little-known shortcut. Here’s how you do it. Go up to the File menu. Notice that one command is Close , which, if you click on it, would close just one workbook. But, if you hold down the Shift key while evoking the File menu, see how the Close command changes to Close All —the command that shuts all your open workbooks in one step.