Chapter 1: Introduction to Excel Introduction to Excel 1 Glyn Davis & Branko Pecar Microsoft Excel 2003 provides a series of tools that can be used to

Chapter 1: Introduction to Excel

Introduction to Excel

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Glyn Davis & Branko Pecar

Microsoft Excel 2003 provides a series of tools that can be used to undertake the analysis of data sets as well as a presentation tool for reporting your results.


Learning Objectives

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On successful completion of the module, you will be able to do the following. •Create a new Excel workbook and worksheets.•Save and close workbooks.•Format cells.•Select a cell.•Select a range of cells.•Enter data into a cell or a range of cells e.g. numbers, text.•Create and modify cell formulas.•Create and apply names to a cell range.•Print worksheets and workbooks and apply preview before printing worksheets.•Understand that Excel can create a table and chart.•Apply Excel functions to solve statistical problems.•Load Excel Analysis ToolPak add-in to solve a range of statistical problems.•Insert an Excel worksheet and chart into Microsoft Word.


Introduction to Microsoft Excel

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Microsoft Excel provides a series of tools that can be used to undertake the analysis of data sets as well as a presentation tool for reporting your results.

A spreadsheet is a table of cells arranged in rows and columns. The data values in each cell can take many forms, such as text, dates, times, and numbers (including currency and percentages).

Excel can create and manipulate spreadsheets (which are called worksheets). It can also produce graphs (known as charts) and can link one worksheet to another.

The relationships between cells are called formulae. If you change the value in a cell, the contents of any cells that depend on that value will change automatically. This enables you to study what-if scenarios.


Components

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• Worksheets - Worksheets can be used to store, manipulate, calculate, analyse data, and create tables and charts.

• Workbooks - These are a collection of sheets stored in the same file on the disk. By keeping related worksheets in the same workbook, it is easy to make simultaneous changes and edits to all workbook sheets at one time, or to consolidate related sheets or do calculations involving multiple sheets. Excel 2003 contains a maximum of 255 worksheets.

• A row - A Row is a line of Horizontal cells within a spreadsheet e.g. A3, B3,C3, D3, E3 etc…Within each worksheet there are 65,536 Rows.

• A column - A Column is a line of Vertical cells within a spreadsheet e.g. A1, A2, A3, A4, A5 etc…Within each worksheet there are 256 Columns.

• A cell - A cell is the intersection of a Row and a Column, which has a unique address or reference. For example where Column C and Row 8 intersect is cell C8. You use cell references when you write formulas or refer to cells.


Continued

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• Absolute cells - A reference such as $A$2 tells Excel how to find a cell based on the exact location of that cell in the worksheet. An absolute reference is designated by adding a dollar sign ($) before the column letter and the row number.

• A range - A selection of multiple cells is referred to as a range. A single cell in some circumstances may represent a range.

• Charts - Excel can create charts quickly to visually represent a data set stored in a worksheet. A range of chart types can be created, including: pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, and scattergrams.

• Macros - Excel can be used to develop and store macros that can be used to undertake frequently applied tasks. This topic is beyond the scope of this text book.

• Presentations - Excel has a range of drawing and formatting tools that can be used to create high quality presentations. These presentations can then be printed or copied to a word processing or presentation software package.


Loading Excel

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Select Start > Programs > Office > Excel


Task Panes

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Example of a task pane

Office Assistant Excel Help

The Getting Started task pane provides easy ways of accessing Office information, creating new workbooks, and opening recently used workbooks.


Saving and Opening a Workbook

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Saving a Workbook

Click on File > Save

A Save As box will appear – give it a file name; name.XLS and save to a particular location.

Opening a Workbook

Click on File > Open (or click on )

Browse to the file that you wish to open and click on Open


Other Basic Tasks

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Closing a workbook

Click on File > Close

Switch to a new worksheet

Click on the tab at the bottom of the screen to select the next sheet.

Creating a new worksheet

Click on Insert > Worksheet

Opening a new workbook

Click on File > New


Printing and Print Preview

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The print preview function allows you to preview your worksheet exactly as it will be printed. Click on the print preview button . A similar screen to that shown below will appear.

Option DescriptionNext When the worksheet has more

than one page, Next displays the next page.

Previous

This will display the previous page.

Zoom Allows you to enlarge the display to see more detail and reduce it again.

Print Calls up the Print window.Setup Calls up the Setup window.Margins Shows the position of the page

margins and indicates were the columns and rows are. You can directly change margins from Print Preview display.

Page Break Preview

Shows the page breaks in documents.

Close Exits Print Preview and returns you to the worksheet.

You can print the document direct from the worksheet by clicking File > Print, or click on situated on the Excel menu bar.


Entering Data and Formatting

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Data is entered into the worksheet by moving the cursor to the appropriate position on the screen, clicking the left mouse button to select the cell, and then typing the information required. The characters you type will then appear in the active cell and on the formula bar. When you have finished typing data into a cell you should signal the end of that data by pressing the enter key.

+ - E e ( ) . , £ % /

Numeric values include only the digits 0-9 and some special characters such as:

A numeric cell entry can maintain precision up to 15 digits. If you enter a number that is too long, Excel converts it to scientific notation. For example, if you type 97867985685859300, it will be stored as 97867985685859300, and displayed as 9.7868E+16. Excel will round the number off or display a string of # signs. A text entry can contain up to 32,767 characters but only 1024 characters will display in the cell but all will be displayed in the formula bar.


Entering Data

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To enter data (or text).

1.Select a cell in which you want to enter data.2.Type in the entry. The entry will appear in the formula bar as it is typed. 3.To enter what you have typed press the Return key, or click on the green tick to enter.

If you make a mistake then click in the cell and press the backspace key on the keyboard.

To cancel a cell entry, click on the red cross before clicking on enter.


Entering Numbers

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Numbers are constant values containing only the following characters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - + / . E e £ $ % , ( ). Once a number has been entered into a cell, it may then be formatted by using the following buttons.

Currency Style

Applies the currently defined Currency style to selected cells

Percent Style Applies the currently defined Percent style to selected cells

Comma Style Applies the currently defined Comma style to selected cells

Increase Decimal place

Adds one decimal place to the number format each time you click the button

Decrease Decimal place

Removes one decimal place from the number each time you click the button


Entering Dates and Times

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If you type a date or time (e.g. 13/4/8 or 16:21) directly into a cell, Excel should automatically recognise it as such and change the cell formatting from general to the appropriate date or time format. The program will normally align it to the right of the cell and display it in the formula bar in a standard format (e.g. 13/04/2008 or 16:21:00).

If you type Excel formatting12/06/08 dd/mm/yy12-June-8 dd-mmm-yy31-Oct dd-mmmOct 13 2008 Mmm d, yyyy24/05/08 3:21 dd/mm/yy hh:mm3:45 PM h:mm AM/PM3:35:30 PM h:mm:ss AM/PM13:50 hh:mm13:50:35 hh:mm:ss


Entering and Formatting Text

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To enter text, select a cell and type the text. A cell can hold up to 255 characters. You can format the characters within a cell individually but note that if there are more than 255 characters in the cell then the cell will show "#########". This problem can be resolved by applying text wrapping to the cell. We can format the text or numbers quite easily using the Excel formatting tools (see below).

Font size

Font type

Bold

Italic

Underline

Align text

Column width Row height

Note. You can name a worksheet by right-clicking on the sheet tab and typing in a new name.


Further Formatting Options

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Inserting and deleting rows and columns, e.g.

•Insert row between row 8 and 9: Right-click on row 8 and Select Insert.•Insert a column between column B and C: Right-click on column B and Select Insert.

Spell checking

Excel allows you to check the spelling of your work. Select a cell with text and click the check spelling button on the toolbar.

AutoFormat

Excel has a number of built in table formats for you to choose from when formatting a table. Click on Format on Excel menu and choose AutoFormat.


Performing Calculations

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Excel can be used to develop simple solutions to business data problems - mathematical, statistical, and financial. Using a formula you can perform operations, such as addition, multiplication, and comparison on worksheet values. Excel formulas always begin with an equal sign e.g. =7/8, =3*5+4/7, =3*A3, and =A3*A3.

% Percent^ Exponentiation* and /

Multiplication and division

+ and -

Addition and subtraction (or negation when placed before a value i.e. -1 )

& Text joining= Equal> Greater than< Less than>= Greater than or equal to<= Less than or equal to<> Not equal to


Absolute/Relative References

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The $ sign in a cell will tell Excel how to treat your references when copying the content of a cell. To illustrate this concept consider what happens to the following formulas in Cell C14 that are copied to D15.

• =C14 becomes =D15

• =$C14 becomes =$C15

• =C$14 becomes =D$14

• =$C$14 becomes =$C$14


If and What If Analysis

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The IF function is very useful in solving numerical problems and enables the user to ask questions of the type ‘Is this true or false’ and then undertake a particular action.

The technique can be illustrated by exploring the marks for two examination tests in which the tutor would like to find out which students obtained a higher mark for test 1 compared to test 2.

Student

Test 1 Test 2

A 46 56B 67 65C 34 67D 78 66

This problem can be solved by using the Excel IF function: =IF(condition, value_if_true, value_if_false)


Excel Analysis ToolPak Add-in

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Together with individual functions, Excel provides the Data Analysis ToolPak Add-in. To install this add-in Select Tools>Add-ins

When installed you will find an extra menu on the Tools menu in Excel called Data Analysis.

This will be used to conduct a range of statistical tests.


Presenting Results

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Excel solutions can be inserted into Microsoft Word.

This can include:

•a worksheet

•an area of a worksheet containing your Excel solution

•an Excel chart.

You can if you wish maintain a direct link (live) between the copied Excel content in your Word document and the Excel worksheet.


Conclusion

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In this presentation we explored Excel 2003 and presented the key skills you will need to develop:

Documents

Chapter 1: Introduction to Excel Introduction to Excel 1 Glyn Davis & Branko Pecar Microsoft Excel 2003 provides a series of tools that can be used to