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Excel Activity

The document describes how to analyze student exam data in a spreadsheet. It includes instructions on how to calculate average scores for each subject and overall averages for each student. It also provides an example of using an IF function to assign letter grades based on score ranges. Finally, it explains how to use conditional formatting to automatically color code the cells in the overall average column based on the score ranges. This allows the spreadsheet user to easily visualize how students are performing at a glance.

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Jesiah Pascual
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
30 views

Excel Activity

The document describes how to analyze student exam data in a spreadsheet. It includes instructions on how to calculate average scores for each subject and overall averages for each student. It also provides an example of using an IF function to assign letter grades based on score ranges. Finally, it explains how to use conditional formatting to automatically color code the cells in the overall average column based on the score ranges. This allows the spreadsheet user to easily visualize how students are performing at a glance.

Uploaded by

Jesiah Pascual
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1

Student Averages Activity


Study the following spreadsheet:

The spreadsheet is the school exam marks of 8 students. A total of 8 subjects were taken. For this
review, work out the Averages for all 8 subjects studied, which is in the K column above. Also,
work out the Overall Averages for each student (row 11 above).

The first thing to do is to recreate the spreadsheet above. You can then use one of the methods
for working out.

Complex If Functions

In this activity, we want to display the following grades as well:

A If the student scores 80 or above


B If the student scores 60 to 79
C If the student scores 45 to 59
D If the student scores 30 to 44
FAIL If the student scores below 30

With such a lot to check for, what will the IF Function look like? Here's one that works:

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=IF(B2>=80, "A", IF(B2>=60, "B", IF(B2>=45, "C", IF(B2 >=30, "D", "Fail" ) ) ) )

Look at the colors of the round brackets above, and see if you can match them up.
What we're doing here is adding more IF Functions if the answer to the first question is
NO. If it's YES, it will just display an "A".

But take a look at our Student Exam spreadsheet now:

After the correct answer is displayed in cell B14 on the spreadsheet above, we used
AutoFill for the rest!

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Excel Conditional Formatting


You can use something called Conditional Formatting in your Excel spreadsheets. Conditional
Formatting allows you to change the appearance of a cell, depending on certain conditions. What
we'll do is to color the Overall Averages on our Student Exam spreadsheet, depending on the
grade. Here's the spreadsheet we'll be working on.

 Open up your Student Exam spreadsheet


 Highlight the cells with Overall Grades, which should be cells B11 to I11

The Overall Averages range from 44 to 85. We'll color each grade, depending on a scale. A
different color will apply to the following grades:

 50 and below
 51 to 60
 61 to 70
 71 to 80
 81 and above

So five different bands, and a color for each. To set the Conditional Formatting in Excel, do the
following:

 With your Overall Averages highlighted, click on the Home menu at the top of Excel
 on The Home ribbon, locate the Styles panel, and the Conditional Formatting item:

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The Conditional Formatting menu gives you various options. The easiest one is the Color Scales
option. Select one of these and Excel will color the cell backgrounds for you:

That's not quite what we're looking for, though. We'd like to choose our own values. So click on
More Rules, from the Color Scales submenu. You'll see the following rather complex dialogue
box:

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The one we want is the second option, Format only cells that contain. This will allow us to set
up our values. When you click this option, the dialogue box changes to this:

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The part we're interested in is the bottom part, under the heading Edit the Rule Description. It
says Cell Value and Between, in the drop down boxes. These are the ones we want. We only
need to type a value for the two boxes that are currently blank in the image above. We can then
click the Format button to choose a color.

So type 0 in the first box and 50 in the second one:

Then click the Format button. You'll get another dialogue box popping up. This is just the
Format Cells one though. You've met this before. Click on the Fill tab and choose a color. Click
OK and you should see something like this under Edit the Rule Description:

The Preview is showing the color we picked. So we've said, "If the Cell Value is between 0 and
50 then color the cell Red".

Click OK on this dialogue box to get back to Excel. You should find that one of the cells has
turned red. To format the rest of the cells, click on Conditional Formatting on the Styles panel
again. From the menu, click on Manage Rules:

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You'll get yet another complex dialogue box popping up! This one:

Our first rule is already there - Cell Value Between. The only thing we're doing here is adding
New Rules, similar to the one we've just set up. Click the New Rule button then. You'll see the
exact same dialogue boxes you used to set up the first rule. Set a new color for the next scores -
51 to 60. Choose a color, and keep clicking OK until you get back to the Rules Manager dialogue
box. It should now look something like this one:

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We now have to colors in our range. Do the rest of the scores, choosing a color for each. The
scores are these, remember:

 50 and below
 51 to 60
 61 to 70
 71 to 80
 81 and above

When you've done them all, your dialogue box should have five colours:

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The colors above are entirely arbitrary, and you don't have to select the same ones we did. The
point is to have a different color for each range of scores. But click OK when you're done. Your
Overall Averages will then look something like this:

Formatting your spreadsheet in this way allows you to see at a glance relevant information. In
the spreadsheet above, it's obvious who's failing - just look for the red cells!

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