5 Work with package MS Office: MS Excel.

This hour introduces you to Excel 2003, Microsoft's spreadsheet program. Microsoft Excel is to numbers what Word is to text; Excel has been called a word processor for numbers. With Excel, you can create numerically based proposals, business plans, business forms, accounting worksheets, and virtually any other document that contains calculated numbers.

If you are new to electronic worksheets, you will probably have to take more time to learn Excel's environment than you had to learn Word's. Excel starts with a grid of cells in which you place information. This hour takes things slowly to acquaint you with Excel and explains the background necessary for understanding how an Excel working area operates.

The highlights of this hour include the following:

• What worksheets and workbooks are

• How to enter various kinds of Excel data

• How to navigate in an Excel worksheet

Starting Excel

When you start Excel, you see a screen similar to the one in Figure 6.1. The task pane is called the home task pane, and it is similar to the task pane all Office products display when you first start the programs. With the home task pane, you can create new Excel documents (called worksheets) and open documents you've recently worked on.

Figure 6.1 Familiarize yourself with Excel's opening screen.

Understanding Worksheets and Workbooks

Excel enables you to create and edit worksheets that you store in workbooks. Typically, people work with a single worksheet (sometimes called a spreadsheet or just sheet). A worksheet is a collection of rows and columns that holds text and numbers, as you see in Figure 6.1. Typically, Excel helps users prepare financial information, but you can manage other kinds of data in Excel, such as a project timeline. If your project requires multiple closely linked worksheets, you can store the worksheets in one large workbook file. A workbook is a collection of one or more worksheets stored in the same file. A company with several divisions might create a workbook with annual sales for each division, and each division might be represented with its own tabbed worksheet inside the workbook.

Any time you create, open, or save an Excel file, you are working with a workbook. Often, that workbook contains only one worksheet. When that's the case, the terms worksheet and workbook are basically synonymous. To open a new Excel worksheet (in a new workbook), select File, New to display the New Document task pane, which is virtually identical to Word's New Document task pane that you learned about in Hour 3, "Formatting with Word 2003."

All Excel files end in the .xls filename extension. Your workbook name is the Excel name you assign when you save a file. You can save Excel worksheets and workbooks in HTML and other formats (such as Lotus 1-2-3 for compatibility and older versions of Excel). When you save your worksheet as an HTML file, you can embed your worksheet data inside a Web page. To save your work, select File, Save; name your Excel workbook and specify the location; and click OK. To load an existing Excel file, use File, Open.

A worksheet is set up in a similar manner to a Word table, except that Excel worksheets can do much more high-end, numeric processing than Word tables can.

Initially, blank Excel workbooks contain three worksheets named Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3, as shown at the bottom of Figure 6.1. When you click a sheet's tab, Excel brings that sheet into view. Again, most of the time you'll stick with one worksheet file per workbook, so you'll typically never have to click on the secondary worksheet tabs to bring the other worksheets into view.

Note

Give your worksheet a name other than Sheet1. Doing so is a good idea to help you keep track of what data is on each worksheet. Right-click the worksheet tab labeled Sheet1, select Rename from the shortcut menu, and enter a different name. By giving your worksheet a meaningful name, such as 2004 Payroll, you can more easily distinguish that worksheet from others that you might use later.

Each worksheet column has a heading; heading names start with A, B, and so on. Each row has a heading, starting with 1, 2, and so on. The intersection of a row and column, called a cell, also has a name that comes from combining the column number and row name, such as C4 or A1. A1 is always the top-left cell on any worksheet. The gridlines throughout the worksheet help you to distinguish between cells.

Note

No matter how large your monitor is, you see only a small amount of the worksheet area. Use the scrollbars to see or edit information in the offscreen cells, such as cell M200.

Every cell in your workbook contains a unique name or address to which you can refer when you are tabulating data. This name is called the cell reference, and it is unique for each cell in the worksheet. The cell pointer (the cell with the dark border around it, the active cell that will receive the next character that you type) indicates the active cell, and you learn to select multiple cells later this chapter. The cell pointer's location, also known as the cell reference, appears at the left of the formula bar. (Some refer to the cell reference as the cell address.) In Figure 6.1, the box reads A1 because the mouse pointer is in cell A1.

When you move your mouse pointer across Excel's screen, notice that the pointer becomes a cross when you point or click over a cell. The cross returns to its pointer shape when you point to another part of Excel, such as a toolbar or task pane.

Figure 6.2 shows a worksheet used to create an invoice for a company. Excel's automatic calculation features are perfect for applications, such as invoices, that require totals. With Excel's advanced formatting tools, your worksheets don't have to look as though they conform to a rigid row-and-column grid system.

Figure 6.2 Your Excel worksheets don't have to appear dull and boring.

Note

Many of Excel's tools and options are similar to Word's, so you already understand many of them. This uniformity applies as well to the basic features in each of the Office products.

Entering Worksheet Data

Often, entering worksheet data requires nothing more than clicking the correct cell to select it and then typing the data. The various kinds of data behave differently when entered, however, so you should understand how Excel accepts assorted data.

Excel can work with the following kinds of data:

• Labels— Text values such as names and addresses, as well as date and time values.

• Numbers— Numeric values such as 34, –291, 545.67874, and 0.

• Formulas— Expressions that compute numeric results. (Some formulas work with text values as well.)

Excel also works well with data from other Office 2003 products as well as integrates into the online Internet world by supporting hyperlinks that you can embed into your worksheets. Additionally, you can import (transfer) worksheet data from other non-Microsoft products, such as Lotus 1-2-3.

Entering Text

If you want to put text (such as a title or a name) in a cell, just click the cell to select it and then type the text. By default, Excel left-justifies the text in the cell. As you type, the text appears both in the cell and in the formula bar (see Figure 6.3). Remember that the name box to the left of the formula bar displays the name of the cell into which you are entering data, such as C7. When you press Enter, Excel moves the cell pointer down one row. In addition to pressing Enter, you can click the Enter button (indicated by a green checkmark) to the right of the name box to keep the current cell selected, or press one of the arrow keys or the Tab key to move the cell pointer to a different cell adjacent to the current one.

Figure 6.3 Excel might or might not display all of a cell's contents.

Note

Press Tab to move the cell pointer to the right or the arrow keys to move the cell pointer in any direction after you enter data.

As you type text into a cell, you can press Backspace to erase what you've typed before anchoring the contents in the cell with Enter or another cursor-movement key. If you press Esc or press the Cancel button at any point during your text entry but before you move to another cell, Excel erases the text you typed in the cell and restores the original cell contents. In addition, you can click the Undo button or press Ctrl+Z to back up to a cell's previous state.

When you create a new worksheet, the cell sizes take on the width and height size specified by the template you specify or by the default template if you don't specify a different one. If the width of your text is greater than a cell's original width, Excel does one of two things, depending on the contents of the next cell to the right:

• If the adjacent cell is empty, Excel displays the entire contents of your entry, with the overflow spilling into the next cell to the right.

• If the adjacent cell contains data, Excel truncates (cuts off) the wide cell to show only as much text as fits in the cell's width. Excel does not remove the unseen data from the cell; however, if the adjacent cell contains data, it always displays instead.

Figure 6.4 shows two long labels in cells C5 and C10. The same label, which is longer than standard cell width, appears in both cells. Because no data resides in D5, Excel displays all the contents of C5. The data in D10, however, overwrites the tail end of C10. C10 still contains the complete label, but only part of it is visible.

Figure 6.4 Excel might or might not display all of a cell's contents.

Note

You can increase and shrink the width and height of columns and rows by dragging the right edge of a column heading or the bottom edge of a row heading. If you drag the right edge of column D to the right, for example, all rows in the entire column D widen.

Excel usually recognizes any entry that begins with an alphabetical character as text. Some textual data, such as price codes, telephone numbers, and ZIP Codes, can fool Excel into thinking you are entering numeric data because of the initial numeric value. As you see in the next section, Excel treats numeric data differently from text data when you type the data into cells. If you want Excel to treat a number (such as a ZIP Code) as a text entry so that it does not perform calculations on the cell, precede the contents with a single apostrophe ('). For example, to type the ZIP Code 74137, type '74137 ; the apostrophe lets Excel know to format the value as text.

When you enter what would otherwise be a valid number but use the apostrophe prefix, Excel places a small green triangle in the cell's upper-left corner. This triangle is a small warning that cautions you about the apostrophe where possible numeric data should appear. If you click the cell, Excel displays an icon you can click to open a pop-up menu with the following options:

• Convert to Number— Converts the number to a numeric format by removing the apostrophe. (You would choose this if you accidentally typed the apostrophe or changed your mind later.)

• Help on This Error— Displays online help about entering numeric and text data.

• Ignore Error— Keeps the apostrophe and removes the green triangle tag.

• Edit in Formula Bar— Places the value in the formula bar with the insertion-point text cursor at the end of the data so that you can edit the data.

• Error Checking Options— Displays the Options dialog box, shown in Figure 6.5, from which you can change the way Excel reacts to a possible data-entry error such as numeric values that you enter with an apostrophe.

Figure 6.5 Specify how you want Excel to handle common errors.

• Show Formula Auditing Toolbar— Displays a toolbar with which you can trace all cell references related to a formula to help you repair formulas that don't produce the results you expect them to.