An Introduction to Excel

By Wanda Gibson, AI, MMI, SME

Interesting Statistics

Excel can have up to 255 worksheets in an individual file

Each of these worksheets has 256 columns

Each of these worksheets has 65,536 rows

That’s a total of 16,777,216 cells per file

The Mouse Pointer

Mouse pointer as a move handle

Mouse pointer appears as a white plus

Mouse pointer appears as the fill handle

A B C D E F G H I123456789

101112131415161718192021222324

Column Letters

Row Numbers Intersection of a column and row is a cell. This

cell reference is F16.

Name BoxFormula Bar

Standard Toolbar

Formatting Toolbar

Menu Bar

Insert Function Box

Number Style Buttons

Number formats

When keying numbers in a worksheet, these facts should be considered:

Numbers are keyed without formatting.

Only decimal points should be used.By default Excel drops trailing

zeros.

This worksheet has been keyed in but has not been formatted. Our next task will be to create formulas

to figure the totals.

Select F4, then click the Autosum button twice. Your formula is

complete.

Using Fill Handle (the square dot in the bottom right corner of the selected cell),

fill (copy) the formula down the worksheet.

The Auto Fill Options Button will remain on the screen until you begin a new task. Since you have not

formatted your worksheet as yet, you can ignore the Options Button or choose the option Fill Without

Formatting.

With all these cells selected, click Autosum twice to

calculate all totals for B8 through E8.

You could also select all number cells including the total column (F) and the total row (8) and click

Autosum. This would cause the computer to figure the total of each row and column at the same time.

Now that all the worksheet is finished, it is time to format it.

Formatting the heading and subheading will be done in two separate steps. We will select A1

through F1 and Merge and Center. Then change the font size to 16.

Font Size

Merge and Center

The subheading is also changed to Arial 14. You would use the same

procedure as you did for the heading.

Select A3 through F8. Using the Menu bar, select Format – then Autoformat.

In the AutoFormat box, choose Accounting 1, then click OK.

The worksheet is now complete.

All we need to do now is Save the worksheet. Go to File – Save As

Key in the File Name -- Smuthers. Click Save.

PermissionsMicrosoft product screen shots

reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.