Excel

Formatting

First in a series of five tutorials that give an overview of all of Excel's major features.

Using Formulas

This is the second of five book set of Screenbooks that provides a look at some of Excel's most powerful features. This Screenbook continues with the same worksheet used in the first tutorial.

This worksheet is incomplete. Let's complete it.

Column D is empty. However, we all the information we need to fill it in. We have a table with the product's unit cost on the right. The Product name is in column B. We just need to look up the product name in the small table on the right, and then we can fill in column D.

But we don't have to do this manually. We can have Excel do it for us.

More on Formulas

This is the third in a five book series of Screenbooks that introduces some of Excel's most powerful features.

Here is our sample spreadsheet again. This time we want to fill in column E.

Column E is more of a challenge than was column D. We want to again look in column B and find the product name. Then we want to look in the second table (The Unit Price table). Only this time, we must a supply a second number, the number of Units sold (column C) because the Unit Price depends on how many units were sold.

Filtering and Sorting

This is the fourth in a five book set of Screenbooks introducing some of Excel's most powerful features.

Here is our spreadsheet again. Let's take a look at some of the things we can do with the data. Let's try sorting by Product. Select a cell in the Product column (B) and then click on sort A-Z.

Pivot Tables

This is the fifth and final in a five book set of Screenbooks introducing some of Excel's most powerful features. This tutorial introduces PivotTables.

PivotTables are perhaps the most powerful feature of Excel. In fact, they may become your main reason for using Excel.

What is a PivotTable? Rather than give a definition at this point, let's just walk through an example.

Start Excel

Excel is an electronic spreadsheet. Spreadsheet is a generic term for a software package that simulates a paper worksheet often used by people in management or accounting. It supports fast calculations, what-if analysese, charts, automatic recalculation and has other powerful features.

Creating a File in Excel

You have learned to open a new worksheet in the previous tutorial. Here we will show how to enter data into your worksheet.

Saving a File

When you work in Excel, your work is saved into your computer's memory, but is not written to your hard disk. Spreadsheet information in your computer's memory is lost as soon as you turn off your computer or exit Excel. In order to keep your spreadsheets for future use, you need to save them.

Saving means writing to your computer's hard disk. Data on your hard disk is not lost when your computer is shut down. You can save your file in any location or directory you want to save. (For a detailed tutorial about files, folders, and saving files, see the Windows tutorial series on www.evisa.com or www.screenbooks.net).

Open a Workbook

You can use Excel to open a workbook you have previously created.

Finding a Work Book

If you have forgotten the name or location of your workbook, you can let Excel find it for you.

Switching between WorkBooks

You can open many workbooks at a time in Excel and switch between them.

Email a Workbook

From within Excel, you can send a workbook via email.

Edit or Delete Data

You can edit the data in your worksheet. Generally, you edit data in a worksheet by editing the data in a single cell. When editing data in a cell, a small flashing vertical line (the cursor ) shows you where keys that you press on the keyboard will be entered into your worksheet.

Move or Copy Data

In Microsoft Excel, once you have created a file and data is entered, you can reorganize your worksheet. You can either move data from one location to another or copy the same data to a different location.

Finding Data

The Find feature in Microsoft Excel allows you to quickly locate a word or a number in your worksheet.

Spelling Check in Excel

Microsoft Excel allows you to check for and correct spelling errors. You can check for spelling errors in either the entire worksheet or selected cells. The spell check works by comparing the words in the selected cells with words in a dictionary. If a word isn't found in the dictionary, you can change the spelling to match a word in the dictionary, or add the word to the dictionary.

Inserting Rows or Columns

You can insert new rows or columns into an existing set of data in a worksheet.

Deleting Rows or Columns

You can remove data that you don't need any more, by either deleting the rows or the columns.

Hiding Columns

In Microsoft Excel, if your worksheet has lots of columns and does not fit on the screen, you can hide columns to reduce the amount of data displayed on the screen. Also, if you have some confidential data that you do not want other people to see, you can hide the columns of that particular data.

Naming Cells

Cells in your worksheet can be given a name. You can name a single cell or a range of cells together.

Cell names can be up to 255 characters in length and should begin with a letter or an underscore. The characters following the first character can be either numbers or letters.

Undo

When you make a change to a worksheet, you can use the Undo feature in Excel to immediately undo the change..

Zooming In or Out

The Zoom feature in Excel allows you to enlarge or reduce the display of data on your screen. When you change the zoom settings, it allows you to see data in more detail or to display more data on your screen at once.

Splitting Worksheets

Your view of a worksheet can be split into seperate frames. Splitting worksheets lets you display different areas of a worksheet at the same time. Each frame contains a copy of your entire worksheet.

Entering a Formula

Not only text and numbers, but also formulas can be entered into a cell. A formula calculates the value in the cell from some other cell or in some other way.

A formula always begin with an equals sign (=). You can enter a formula in any cell in your worksheet.

If you use cell references instead of actual data when entering a formula, Excel will redo the calculations automatically when the cell being referenced is changed.

Entering Functions

A function in Excel is a ready-to-use formula. Excel has more than 200 functions for you to choose from.

To enter a function in a cell, you enter first the equals sign, then the name of the function, then the arguments for the function.

Adding Numbers

The AutoSum feature in Excel allows you to add and calculate the sum of a list of numbers in your worksheet.

Copying a Formula

A formula you have used in your worksheet can be copied to other cells if you want to reuse it.

Inserting a Worksheet

Your Excel workbook by default contains three worksheets. However, you can add as many worksheets as you want.

You can also remove worksheets from your workbook.

Switching between Worksheets

You can easily switch between different worksheets in a workbook.

Each worksheet in your workbook has a tab that displays the name of the worksheet. The active worksheet that is displayed on the screen has a white tab whereas others are represented by a grey tab. The contents of the inactive worksheets are hidden.

Renaming a Worksheet

A worksheet in your workbook is automatically given a name like Sheet1, Sheet2 etc by Excel. You can, however rename a worksheet. You must name each worksheet uniquely.

Moving a Worksheet

Worksheets can be moved into a different order in your workbook, or moved to a different workbook.

You should take care when you move a worksheet because formulas which reference cells in the moved worksheet may no longer work.

Changing Column Width or Row Height

Column widths and row heights can be adjusted easily in Excel. This allows you to display the data in your worksheet more clearly.

Font Face and Size

You can change the font face (the font type) and the font size in your worksheet. You can change the font in the entire worksheet, or in individual cells.

Bold Italic or Underline

Styles of data in your worksheet can be changed by using the features of Bold, Italic and Underline .

Colors

Cell data colors and cell background colors can be specified in Excel.

Cell Alignment

Alignment of data in your worksheet can be changed in different ways.

Left align
Center
Right align
Increase indent
Decrease indent

You can also align data vertically or rotate data in cells.

Number Formats

You can change the way numbers are displayed in your worksheet by changing the data format of the number. Some formats that you can use:

The Currency Format
The Comma Format
The Percent Format

Changing a format does not actually change the data - only how it appears.

Data Formats

The Numbers tab in the Format Cells dialog has many more options for formatting your data according to the data type.

Adding Borders

You can change the color and thickness of cell borders. You can use this feature to create separate boxes of data in your spreadsheet.

Copy Formatting

The Format Painter feature in Microsoft Excel enables you to copy the formatting from one cell to other cells in your worksheet.

You can copy all of the data formatting such as currency, date and percentage. You can also copy font formatting such as size, color and alignment. Cell colors and borders can also be copied, but Excel does not copy the row height or the column width of the cells.

Clear Formatting

You can remove all formatting from a cell. However the row height or column width will not be reset when formatting is cleared.

If you have used the Delete key to remove data from a cell, you may need to clear formatting in that cell or else Excel will apply the formatting to any new data that you enter in the cell.

Autoformat in Excel

In addition to formatting data as has been shown, you can choose from numerous AutoFormats provided by Excel.

Some types of AutoFormats you can choose from include:

Accounting .
Colorful
3-D effects

Print Preview

After you have created a worksheet in Microsoft Excel, you can preview the worksheet before printing.

The Print Preview feature will display the Preview Window in black and white if you are using a black and white printer, and in color if you are using a color printer.

Print

Printing a workbook or worksheet allows you to have a paper copy of your work.

You may have more than one printer connected to your machine, in which case you will need to choose which printer to print to. The printer needs to be turned on and loaded with paper, of course.

You can print your whole worksheet or just a part of your worksheet. You can also specify the pages you want to print if your worksheet contains many pages.

Page Orientation

You can change the Page Orientation when you print. There are two options:

Portrait: Page is printed with paper in vertical orientation.
Landscape: Page is printed with paper in horizontal orientation.

When you change the page orientation, the entire worksheet will be affected but will not affect other worksheets in the workbook. It does not change the way the worksheet appears on the screen. You can use Print Preview to see how the page looks after you have changed the page orientation.

More Print Options

Additional printing options can be chosen from the Page Setup dialog.

Gridlines: This will print the lines around each cell in your worksheet. As shown previously, this can also be specified from Print Preview.
Black and White: print in black and white only.
Draft Quality: quick print with lower quality output.
Row and Column Heading Options: prints out the row numbers and column headings in your worksheet (A, B,C and 1,2,3 etc).

Changing print options does not change the way your worksheet displays on the screen. It only changes the way your worksheet is printed out.

Changing Margins

Print margins are the spaces between your data and the edge of the output paper. By default, top margins and bottom margins are set at 1 inch and left and right margins at .75 inch. You can change them according to your needs.

At least .25 inch margins are needed for your document to be printed correctly.

Page Breaks

You can instruct Excel to finish printing a page and start a new page at a specific point in your workbook. This is called "Inserting a Page Break".

Excel automatically creates page breaks, but you may want to manually specify a page break. For example, you may find that Excel is putting some rows on separate pages that you would rather have on one page.

Both horizontal and vertical page breaks will be demonstrated in this tutorial.

You can preview page breaks that you have inserted before printing out the page. Page breaks inserted by Excel will be shown as dotted blue lines. Page breaks inserted by you will be shown as solid blue lines.

Specifying Number of Pages

You can specify exactly how many pages you want Excel to use when printing out your data. Excel will resize your worksheet to fit the number of pages that you specify.

This feature can be especially useful when your last page of data has just a few lines.

When using this feature, Excel ignores any page breaks that you have inserted.

This feature only affects printed output. It does not affect how your worksheet appears on the screen. Use Print Preview to see how your printout will look.

Add Page Labels

You can print the same row or column labels on every page of your worksheet. Repeating row or column labels makes the data in a long worksheet easier to understand.

Repeating labels on a printout will not affect the appearance of your worksheet displayed on the screen. Use the Print Preview feature to see how the repeated labels will look in the printout of your worksheet.

Adding a Header or Footer

In addition to using a worksheet row as a column label, you can also add arbitrary text to the top and bottom of each printed page. These text items are called headers and footers .

Excel provides many premade headers and footers to choose from. You can have a footer which can include the current date every time your worksheet is printed. A confidential report can have a header saying "Confidential". You can also make your own header or footer, or customize an existing one.

You can use the Print Preview feature to see how a header or a footer in your worksheet will appear in the printout.

Creating a List

Many worksheets consist of a single table of data, with a title for each column. Such a worksheet is called a list . Excel has extra features for dealing with such worksheets.

To create a list, first create a series of column headings.

Filtering Data in a list

One of the features available with a list in Excel is AutoFilter .

Click any cell in the list.

Sorting Data in a list

Data in a list can be quickly sorted in any way.

Click on a cell in the list.

Adding Subtotals to a List

Excel can display subtotals for your list.

First, sort by the column you want to use to group the records.

Macros

You can record a series of actions in Excel, and give it a name. Later you can rerun the series of commands by specifying the name. This named sequence of commands is called a Macro. To start recording a macro, click Tools .

Creating a Chart Part I

The data in your worksheet can be displayed graphically by creating a Chart.

You can easily created a chart with the Chart Wizard. There are different types of chart for you to choose from, such as column, pie or area chart. You can also specify to plot your worksheet data by rows or by columns.

You can add a title to your chart. The categories (column headers) used in the chart will be indicated on the x-axis whereas the units of measurement will be indicated on the y-axis.

Creating a Chart Part II

A chart in your workbook has a legend that identifies the color, symbol or pattern for each data series used in your chart.

A data series is a group of related data in a row or column in your worksheet. If you have more than one data series in your chart, Excel will identify each data series by using different colors, patterns or symbols.

Changing Chart Type

Excel has a list of 14 standard Chart types and about 70 designs for you to choose from. Choosing from these lists, you can change your chart type so that you can present your data in the way you want. The most popular type of charts are:

Column Charts
Bar Charts
Line Chart
Area Chart
Pie Chart

Moving Resizing or Deleting A chart

You can either delete, move or resize a chart.

To move a chart, bring your mouse over a blank area in the chart.

Adding Data to a Chart

You can add new data to an existing chart.

Select the cells containing the data you want to add, including the row or column labels.

Printing a Chart

Printing a chart can be done in two ways: with the data or just the chart itself.

To print a chart with the worksheet data, click a cell outside the chart.