1: Getting Started with Microsoft Excel

The Workspace 1
Menu commands 2
Toolbars 3
Cell References 4
Cell Entries 4
Formatting 5
Saving and Opening Workbook Files 7

The Workspace
Figure 1 shows the Microsoft Excel 2000 window. Yours may not be exactly the same
because the user can customize the window. The main parts of the window are:
< Starting at the top we have the Title bar. When Excel is started a new workbook is
opened with the name Book1.
< Below the title bar is the Menu bar. You can issue commands from the menu bar
including such actions as saving the data to a file, printing a worksheet, changing the
appearance of some text, etc. As with all Windows applications, menu commands may
be executed by clicking an item or by typing the underscored letter while holding down
the A key.
< Next come the Toolbars which provide a way of accessing some of the most used
commands. The toolbars contain a subset of the complete set of menu commands.
There are many toolbars but generally we have only two displayed: the Standard and
the Formatting toolbars. By default, Excel 2000 displays the two docked together. We
explain later how to separate them. You can specify which toolbars are visible with the
menu command View|Toolbars. If you let the mouse pointer linger over a tool icon,
Excel will display a tooltip. This makes it easy to learn the purpose of each tool.
< The Formula bar displays the current cell’s address in the Name box and either the
value or the formula in that cell.
< The Worksheet window is the main working area. The space is ruled horizontally and
vertically by gridlines, dividing the space into rows and columns. The smallest unit of
space, where a row and a column intersect, is called a cell. At the top of the worksheet
are the 256 column headings starting with A and ending with IV. To the left are the row
headings numbered 1 to 65536 (or 16384 in versions prior to Excel 97). The letters (A,
B, etc) at the top of the worksheet window are the column headers and the numbers
to the left are the row headers.
< At the bottom of the worksheet window are the sheet tabs. A workbook is made up of
worksheets and, optionally, chart sheets. Excel 2000 opens a new workbook with three
empty worksheets.
< Finally at the bottom of the window is the Status bar. To the left is the message area.
Most of the time this displays the word Ready. When you begin to enter something in
a cell it displays Enter to remind you to complete the entry. At other times it may display
Edit. To the right are some sculptured boxes called the Keyboard indicators. Press the
c key a few times and watch the text “CAPS” appear and disappear.
2 Getting Started with Excel

Figure 1
The active cell is the cell with a border around it. To move to another cell and make it
active, (a) use the keyboard arrow keys; (b) use the T key or the combination of
S+T; or (c) simply click the mouse on the required cell. A quick way to return to
cell A1 is the combination C+h.

Menu commands
The menus in Excel 2000 are similar to menus in other Windows applications. However,
as with all the Microsoft Office 2000 products there is a small difference from earlier
versions: when you open a menu item an abbreviated version is displayed (Figure 2.)

Figure 2
 Getting Started with Excel 3

Figure 3

The menu shows the commonly used and the most recently used commands. The entire
menu is displayed if you click on the down arrow at the bottom of the menu. If your version
of Excel is so configured, the full menu will also appear after a short delay. To configure
Excel, either use the command Tools|Customize or right click on the menu bar and select
the Customize item. In either case, the Customize dialog box is opened. If you move to the
Option tag, the dialog box resembles Figure 3. To have all the commands displayed, clear
the check mark from the Menus show recently used commands first box. Beaware that this
action will affect other Microsoft Office 2000 application on your PC.

Menu commands may be accessed by clicking on the required item. Alternatively, you may
hold down the A key and press the key corresponding to the underscored letter in the
menu item. Thus the File menu is opened with A+F. A third method is available for other
commands. If you open the File menu you will see to the right of the Save item the shortcut
CTRL+S. This means that the key commination C+S will save the current file – there is
no need to open the File menu for this to work. The shortcuts for copy and paste (C+C
and C+V) are very useful to know.

Toolbars
As with all Windows applications, the toolbars provide quick access to the more frequently
used menu commands. That is to say, the commands available from toolbars are a subset
of the menu commands. In Excel2000 the Standard and the Formatting toolbars are
docked together on one row by default. This means that only part of each toolbar is visible.
To see the hidden part, click on the double arrow. If you prefer to have the toolbars on
separate rows, open the Customize dialog box as explained above and clear the check
mark from the box labelled Standard and Formatting toolbars share one row (Figure 3.)

The amount of space allocated to each toolbar when they share a row may be
changed. With the mouse, click on the vertical bar to the right of the first double arrow and
drag it to one side.
4 Getting Started with Excel

Cell References
To refer to a specific cell we use a cell reference. This is a combination of the column
heading and the row number. The cell at the top left, which is at the intersection of column
A and row 1, has a cell address of A1. The cell below is A2 while the cell to the right is B1.
This method of naming cells using the column letter is called the A1 method. To reference
a cell on another sheet of the same workbook, we use the form Sheet2!B4 – note the
exclamation mark. To reference a cell in another workbook we can use the form 'C:\My
Documents\[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1. We discuss the dollar signs in a cell reference later
in this chapter.

Cell Entries
A cell may contain data or a formula. A data entry may be: a number, text (sometimes
called labels) or a date. Formulas begin with an equal sign (=). We discuss formulas in
detail in the next unit.
You may wish to experiment by making the worksheet shown in Figure 4. Type the
entries in cell A1, C1, G1 and in row 2. For example, with A1 as the active cell, type the
word Text and press the R key to complete the entry. We will discuss other ways of
completing a entry later. Click on C1 and enter the next piece of data.

A B C D E F G
1 Text This is an example of a long text entry 123456789
2 123 1.5 1.55 1 1/2 1.23457E+14 Figure 4

A number of observations may be made about how entries are initially treated. Later we
will discuss how formatting may be used to change the appearance.
1) Text is left aligned by default. By this we mean that on a newly opened worksheet any
text typed into a cell will be placed to the left within the cell. The alignment may be
changed by formatting the cell.
2) By default, numbers are left aligned.
3) Text can overflow into empty adjacent cells as shown by the entry in C2. If you type
anything in D2, only part of C2's entry will be visible in the cell but all of it will be
visible in the Formula bar.
4) When a large number (not too large) is entered, the column automatically widens to
accommodate all the digits.
5) Very large numbers (the value typed into G2 was 123456789123456) are converted
to exponential (sometimes called scientific) notation. The displayed value
1.23457E+14 means the same as 1.234567 × 1014. In the next unit we discuss Excel’s
precision.
6) A whole number can have no more with than 15 digits. You are unlikely to be working
with numbers that large. Objects we often call numbers are really just a string of
digits. For example, phone numbers and account numbers are not real numbers in
that we never perform arithmetic operations on them. In these cases it is better to
enter the value by first typing a single quote (it is found on the key next to R).
This quote mark will not be displayed in the cell but will cause the entry to be treated
as text.
7) By default, Excel does not display what it considers to be insignificant digits. Thus if
you type 1.50 in B2, the value 1.5 will be displayed in the cell and in the formula bar.
 Getting Started with Excel 5

Again, formatting can be used to change this.

8) Fractions may be entered as in D2. Note there is a space between the 1 and the 1/2.
If you wish to enter a fraction (for example, 1/2) without a whole number, you must
enter it with a preceding 0 followed by a space (e.g. 0 1/2). The zero will not be
displayed when the entry is completed. In all cases, the values displayed in the
Formula bar will be in decimal form (e.g. 1.5, or 0.5).
9) To evaluate a number in fractional notations, enter it as a formula. Thus to display the
result of 1½ + 3¾ enter = 1+1/2+3+3/4. See the next unit for more on formulas.
10) Improper fractions are converted on entry. Thus 1 4/8 will be converted to 1 1/2. In
certain cases (when the denominator is 2, 4, 8, 16, 10 or 100) we may format the cell
to overcome this.
11) If you enter something like 4/12 without a leading zero, Excel will take this to mean
a date – either 4 December or 12 April depending on your Regional Setting. We will
not be discussing dates in this supplement.
We indicated above that you need to let Excel know when you have finished entering
something in a cell and recommended the use of the R key. This is not the only way.
Any of the navigation keys (B, L , R , T) and T may be used. Alternatively, you may
click the Tin the Formula bar – this is displayed only while a cell entry is being made or
edited. Do not get into the bad habit of clicking the mouse on another cell to complete an
entry. While this will work when you are entering data it will cause you grief when working
with formulas.

Formatting
Formatting is anything that changes the appearance of an entry: alignment, number of
decimals used to display a number, font typeface, font style (bold, italic, or underlined),
font size, font colour, borders around the cell, a coloured background for the cell, etc. In
addition, we may change the width of a column and the height of a row, and text may be
centred over a number of cells. You may format cells one-by-one or, by first selecting a
number of cells, all the cells in a range may be formatted at one time.

Clearly the Formatting toolbar provides many tools to change the appearance of a cell. If
you let the pointer linger over a tool icon, a tooltip will appear telling you the purpose of
the tool. You should use this method to identify the tools to change the font typeface, size
and style (bold, italic and underlined). In the same way, find the three tools to change
alignment.

Each of the tools which add borders, change the font colour and add a coloured
background (pattern), has a small – beside it to indicate that the tool leads to a dialog
box. Note that the border tool provides only black borders, below we see how to get
coloured ones. Recall that the tools are a subset of the menu commands.

Other tools on the Formatting toolbar may be used to change how numeric values are
displayed. Locate the Increase decimals and the Decrease decimals tool, and the tools
to change the display to currency, as a value with thousand separators, or as a
percentage.
6 Getting Started with Excel

The menu command Format|Cells opens up the dialog box shown in Figure 6. From the
Number tab one can set the format for numbers. The default setting is called General. You
may wish to experiment with the Fixed and the Currency setting. If you click on the Fraction
item you will see that it is possible to have fractional values displayed as quarters, eighths,
etc.

Figure 6

The command Format|Column may be used to alter the width of a column. The default
width is 8.38 units. A group of columns may be altered by selecting them in the column
heading row before opening the Format|Column dialog. One of the most useful items on
this dialog is the AutoFit Selection which makes the columns just the right width to hold
their contents. If a column is given a width that is too small to hold a numeric value, the
value will be displayed as ########. The solution is to (a) widen the cell and/or (b) display
the value with fewer decimals if possible.

To experiment with formatting, make the worksheet shown in Figure 7. The vertical text
was typed in normally and the cells were formatted with Format|Cells and opening the
Alignment tab. The columns with this text were formatted for AutoFit. Using Tools|Options,
and opening the View tab, the gridlines were removed from this worksheet.

Training completed
Customer inquiry
Inventory check
Cash register

Damian x x
Jo x x
Justin x
Nichola x x
Simon x x
Tim x x x
Figure 7
 Getting Started with Excel 7

Saving and Opening Workbook Files

A workbook file is saved with the File|Save command or with the file save tool. If you are
working with a new file, Windows will open the normal Save dialog box enabling you to
specify a folder and a name for the file. Windows will add the Excel extension XLS to the
filename. If the file had been previously named, a save command will save the file with no
dialog box.
You may experience problems saving an Excel file on a floppy disk. This can be
avoided by working with a file saved on the hard drive. You can then use Windows
Explorer or MyComputer to transfer the completed file to a floppy disc.
A file may be opened with the File|Open command or with the file open tool. Windows
opens a dialog box to enable you to specify the folder from which the file is to be opened.