Microsoft Excel

Introduction

Key to understanding Excel is the concept of Workbooks.

What workbooks do is to place multiple pages, each containing a worksheet, inside of what Excel calls a "Workbook."

Workbooks allow you to place similar information in a single file, helping you to organize your information more efficiently.

In Excel each workbook can contain up to 255 separate worksheet pages each with 16,384 rows by 256 columns--more than enough for you!

Excel is divided into a grid-like configuration helping you to identify fields where your information is.

For example: the upper left corner is cell A1.

Scrollbars--let you view parts of the worksheet not visible.

Split bars--allow you to split the worksheet into two panes to enable you to view different portions of the worksheet at one time.

Row headers--Identifies each row and can be used to select rows.

Column Headers--Identifies each column and can be used to select columns.

Cursor--Indicates the currently selected (or active) cell.

Tabs--Select each worksheet in the workbook.

Standard Toolbar and Formatting Toolbar

Formula bar--displays the contents of the active cell.

Scroll buttons--Scrolls among the worksheet tabs in a workbook.

Renaming worksheet tabs is probably the one of the first things you will want to do.

You can easily rename the tab by right-clicking and choosing rename.

You can also select similar cells from multiple worksheets by selecting your cells from one worksheet, holding down CTRL and clicking on the tabs of the other worksheets you wish to also select.

One interesting feature in Excel is that you can select cells which are in different parts of the worksheet.

All you need do is to hold down the CTRL key and select additional cells.

This is called selecting discontiguous ranges or nonadjacent areas.

Right clicking on a worksheet tab gives you access to various functions for managing your worksheets.

From this pop-up window you can delete a worksheet, insert a worksheet, rename a worksheet, and move or copy a worksheet.

With large worksheets it is often necessary to split the worksheet so that you can view particular parts at the same time.

To split a worksheet, drag one of the split bars or place the cursor where you want to split it and choose Window>>Split.

You can split a worksheet both horizontally and vertically.

Often time you also will want to Freeze the Panes.

Freezing panes keeps the panes from scrolling keeping data, like a header from moving.

You can enter either a value or a formula in any cell of an Excel worksheet.

Values are exactly that: constant amounts or sets of characters, dates, or times.

Formulas are combinations of values, cell references, and operators that Excel uses to calculate a result.

When you place your cursor on a cell and begin typing, your entry appears in the Formula bar at the top of the window.

When you type the check button and cancel button become active.

When you are done you can choose either one or you can hit Enter to accept the value you have inputted.

You can also enter data directly into cells of a worksheet by turning on Excel’s Edit Directly in Cell option.

Choose Tools>>>Options and select the Edit tab.

Turn on the Edit Directly in Cell check box.

To activate the feature double-click on a cell.

When you enter a number into Excel it attempts to determine what type of data it is and format it in the correct way.

You can enter numbers several ways; as a percent (80%), as a monetary unit ($5) as a decimal, as a large number (2,300,300), as a fraction (5/8 or 3 5/8). Excel can handle all.

Text can contain letters, numbers, or special characters.

A single cell can hold up to 255 characters.

By default, text is align to the left of a cell.

If you need to have a number taken as text rather than a value, you can do this be placing quotation marks around the number.

The underlying values of your entered data may be different than those displayed.

For example enter in the following:

1234567890.1234

$100.5575

2.14159E10

You can see that the underlying value is not always the same.

What appears in the Formula bar is what is used in calculations.

Excel allows you to add comments to any cell of a worksheet.

Comments are like Post-it notes for your worksheets.

Comments can help you to understand what is contained in a cell without the limits of the cell.

Excel offers several ways of clearing data from cells depending on what you wish to accomplish.

The first is to just select the cells you wish to clear and hit the delete key.

To delete more than the values (such as special formatting) choose Edit>>Clear and select from the choices.

Copying data and moving it from one worksheet to another is something that you will do often.

You can Move cells by selecting and dragging or by cutting and pasting.

You can also use the Fill command to copy data to adjacent cells.

Just select the cell and drag the fill handle in the lower right corner.

You can use AutoFill to complete entries in Excel of standard information like months and days of the week in a series. It is also possible to customize AutoFill for series of Data that you consistently enter.

To use, just type in the date and drag the fill handle.