Microsoft Excel Training Updated
Microsoft Excel Training Updated
What is Excel?
It’s spreadsheet and data analysis program in Office 2003. It combines incredible
power with ease of use, giving both professionals and occasional users the features
they need. Excel 2003 is designed in such a way that you can use it as a basis
spread sheet program, and learn more skills as you need to.
Using Excel as a Spreadsheet
A basis Spreadsheet is comprised of a table of values, some of which are
calculated by formulas and functions. Excel 2003 can check your formulas and
help you define functions using wizards.
With a computer based spreadsheet, you can change a particular data value
in the spreadsheet and all the values that are affected by the change are re-
calculated. To take full advantage of this feature, you should use formulas and
functions instead of numbers when possible.
Using Excel as a Database
A Database is a collection of data that can be organised so that it is easily
accessible. You can quickly build and organise a database using Microsoft Excel.
For databases that are larger and more complex, use Microsoft Access.
Analysing Data
Microsoft Excel has facilities that can be used to analyse data. You could find
answers to ‘’what if’’ questions, compare results of different scenarios, or find the
best solution to complex problems.
Tabs
Excel 2010 makes it possible to easily create your own tab and add commands to it. If you are
new to Excel, you can skip this paragraph.
1. Right click anywhere on the ribbon, and then click Customize the Ribbon
2. Click New Tab
2. Add the commands you like.
3. Rename the tab and group.
Note: you can also add new groups to existing tabs. To hide a tab, uncheck the corresponding
check box. Click Reset. Reset all customizations, to delete all ribbon and Quick Access
Toolbar customizations.
Result.
Workbook
Open an Existing Workbook
1. Click on the green File tab.
What you see next is called the backstage view and it contains all the workbook related
commands.
2. Recent shows you a list of your recently used workbooks. You can quickly open a workbook
from here.
3. Click Open to open a workbook that is not on the list.
Close a Workbook
If you are new to Excel, it's good to know the difference between closing a workbook and
closing Excel. This can be confusing in the beginning.
1. To close an Excel workbook, click the lower X.
2. If you have multiple workbooks open, clicking the upper right X closes the active workbook.
If you have one workbook open, clicking the upper right X closes Excel.
Although Excel creates a blank workbook when you open it, sometimes you want to start all
over again.
Select a Worksheet
When you open Excel, Excel automatically selects Sheet1 for you. The name of the
worksheet appears on its sheet tab at the bottom of the document window.
To select one of the other two worksheets, simply click on the sheet tab of Sheet2 or Sheet3.
Rename a Worksheet
By default, the worksheets are named Sheet1, Sheet2 and Sheet3. To give a worksheet a more
specific name, execute the following steps.
2. Choose Rename.
3. For example, type Sales 2010.
Insert a Worksheet
You can insert as many worksheets as you want. To quickly insert a new worksheet, click the
Insert Worksheet tab at the bottom of the document window.
Result:
Move a Worksheet
To move a worksheet, click on the sheet tab of the worksheet you want to move and drag it
into the new position.
1. For example, click on the sheet tab of Sheet4 and drag it before Sheet2.
Result:
Delete a Worksheet
Result:
Copy a Worksheet
Imagine, you have got the sales for 2010 ready and want to create the exact same sheet for
2011, but with different data. You can recreate the worksheet, but this is time-consuming. It's
a lot easier to copy the entire worksheet and only change the numbers.
4. Click OK.
Result:
Note: you can even copy a worksheet to another Excel workbook by selecting the specific
workbook from the drop-down list (see the dialog box shown earlier).
Format Cells:
When we format cells in Excel, we change the appearance of a number without changing the
number itself.
We can apply a number format (0.8, $0.80, 80%, etc) or other formatting (alignment, font,
border, etc).
1. Enter the value 0.8 into cell B2.
By default, Excel uses the General format (no specific number format) for numbers. To
apply a number format, use the 'Format Cells' dialog box.
3. Right click, and then click Format Cells (or press CTRL + 1).
The 'Format Cells' dialog box appears.
5. Click OK.
Cell B2 still contains the number 0.8. We only changed the appearance of this number,
not the number itself. The most frequently used formatting commands are available on
the Home tab.
6. On the Home tab, in the Number group, click the Percentage symbol to apply a
Percentage format.
8. On the Home tab, in the Font group, change the Font colour.
9. On the Home tab, in the Font group, add borders.
Find
2. Type the text you want to find. For example, type Ferrari.
Replace
To quickly find specific text and replace it with other text, execute the following steps.
The 'Find and Replace' dialog box appears (with the Replace tab selected).
2. Type the text you want to find (Veneno) and replace it with (Diablo).
Excel selects the first occurrence. No replacement has been made yet.
Go To Special
You can use Excel's Go To Special feature to quickly select all cells with formulas,
comments, conditional formatting, constants, data validation, etc. For example, to select all
cells with formulas, execute the following steps.
Note: you can search for cells with formulas that return Numbers, Text, Logicals (TRUE and
FALSE) and Errors. These check boxes are also available if you select Constants.
Templates:
Instead of creating an Excel workbook from scratch, you can create a workbook based on a
template. There are many free templates available, waiting to be used.
Existing Templates
2. To choose a template from one of the sample templates (these are already installed on your
computer), click on Sample templates.
2. To choose a template from the Office.com Templates, click a category. For example, click
Calendars.
3. To download a template, select a template and then click Download.
Excel creates a workbook (UniversalCalendar1.xlsx) based on this template. Excel also
stores the template (UniversalCalendar.xltx) in the Templates folder. You can access this
folder by clicking on My Templates (see first picture).
Create a Template
If you create your own template, you can safely store it in the Templates folder. As a result,
you can create new workbooks based on this template without worrying that you overwrite
the original file.
1. Create a workbook.
2. On the green File tab, click Save As.
Excel automatically activates the Templates folder. Notice the location of the Templates
folder on your computer. It's usually located here:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates
5. Click Save.
To create a workbook based on this template, execute the following steps.
7. Click My Templates.
8. Select WeddingBudget.
9. Click OK.
Excel creates a workbook (WeddingBudget1.xlsx) based on this template.
Note: to edit a template, on the green File tab, click Open to open the template. Edit the file
and save the file to its original location.
Data Validation:
Use data validation in Excel to make sure that users enter certain values into a cell.
In this example, we restrict users to enter a whole number between 0 and 10.
Input messages appear when the user selects the cell and tell the user what to enter.
2. Enter a title.
If users ignore the input message and enter a number that is not valid, you can show them an
error alert.
2. Enter a title.
4. Click OK.
Result:
Note: to remove data validation from a cell, select the cell, on the Data tab, click Data Validation, and
then click Clear All. You can use Excel's Go To Special feature to quickly select all cells with data
validation.
Keyboard Shortcuts:
Keyboard shortcuts allow you to do things with your keyboard instead of your mouse to increase
your speed.
Basic
Select cell B2
1. To select the entire range, press CTRL + a (if you press CTRL + a one more time Excel selects
the entire sheet).
2. To copy the range, press CTRL + c (to cut a range, press CTRL + x).
Moving
1. To quickly move to the bottom of the range, hold down CTRL and press ↓
2. To quickly move to the right of the range, hold down CTRL and press →
Try it yourself. Hold down CTRL and press the arrow keys to move from edge to edge.
Selecting
1. To select cells while moving down, hold down SHIFT and press ↓ a few times.
2. To select cells while moving to the right, hold down SHIFT and press → a few times.
Formulas
1. To quickly insert the SUM function, press ATL + =, and press Enter.
2. Select cell F2, hold down SHIFT and press ↓ two times.
n
Note: in a similar way, you can fill a formula right by pressing CTRL + r (right).
Formatting
2. Press TAB and press ↓ two times to select the Currency format.
3. Press TAB and press ↓ two times to set the number of decimal places to 0.
4. Press Enter.
Result:
4. To quickly bold a range, select the range and press CTRL + b
Print:
This chapter teaches you how to print a worksheet and how to change some important print
settings in Excel.
Print a Worksheet
2. To preview the other pages that will be printed, click 'Next Page' or 'Previous Page' at the
bottom of the window.
3. To print the worksheet, click the big Print button.
What to Print
Instead of printing the entire worksheet, you can also only print the current selection.
Note: you can also print the active sheets (first select the sheets by holding down CTRL and
clicking the sheet tabs) or print the entire workbook. Use the boxes next to Pages (see first
screenshot) to only print a few pages of your document. For example, 2 to 2 only prints the
second page.
Multiple Copies
2. If one copy contains multiple pages, you can switch between Collated and Uncollated. For
example, if you print 6 copies, Collated prints the entire first copy, then the entire second
copy, etc. Un-collated prints 6 copies of page 1, 6 copies of page 2, etc
Orientation
You can switch between Portrait Orientation (more rows but fewer columns) and Landscape
Orientation (more columns but fewer rows).
Page Margins
1. Select one of the predefined margins (Normal, Wide or Narrow) from the Margins drop-
down list.
2. Or click the 'Show Margins' icon at the bottom right of the window. Now you can drag the
lines to manually change the page margins.
Scaling
If you want to fit more data on one page, you can fit the sheet on one page. To achieve this,
execute the following steps.
1. Select 'Fit Sheet on One Page' from the Scaling drop-down list.
Note: you can also shrink the printout to one page wide or one page high. Click Custom
Scaling Options to manually enter a scaling percentage or to fit the printout to a specific
number of pages wide and tall. Be careful, Excel doesn't warn you when your printout
becomes unreadable.
Share:
Learn how to share Excel data with Word documents and other files.
Paste
Most of the time, you'll simply need to paste static Excel data in a Word document.
2. Right click, and then click Copy (or press CTRL + c).
7. Click the icon in the upper left corner of the table and add borders.
Result.
Paste Link
You can also link the source data in Excel with the destination data in Word. If you change
the data in Excel, the data in Word is updated automatically.
3. Click OK.
4. Click the icon in the upper left corner of the table and add borders.
Result.
5. Change the Excel data.
Result.
Note: In Word, on the File tab, click Info, and then click Edit Links to files (in the lower right corner) to
launch the Links dialog box. Here, you can break a link, change the location of the Excel file, etc.
Protect:
Encrypt an Excel file with a password so that it requires a password to open it.
1. Open a workbook.
Note: this feature also encrypts your Excel file. If you lose or forget the password, it cannot be
recovered.
Functions
Discover how functions in Excel help you save time. If you are new to functions in Excel,
we recommend you to read our introduction to Formulas and Functions first.
1 Count and Sum: The most used functions in Excel are the functions that count and sum.
You can count and sum based on one criteria or multiple criteria.
This example teaches you how to count the number of occurrences of text in a range.
1. For example, to count the number of cells that contain exactly star.
2. For example, to count the number of cells that contain exactly star + 1 character. A question
mark (?) matches exactly one character.
3. For example, to count the number of cells that contain exactly star + a series of zero or more
characters. An asterisk (*) matches a series of zero or more characters.
4. For example, to count the number of cells that contain star in any way. No matter what is
before or after star, this function finds all the cells that contain star in any way.
5. For example, to count the number of cells that contain text.
2 Logical: Learn how to use Excel's logical functions such as the IF, AND and OR function.
4. For example, to count the number of cells that contain TRUE or FALSE.
Count Blank/Nonblank Cells
This example shows you how to count the number of blank and nonblank cells in Excel.
2. The COUNTA function counts the number of nonblank cells. COUNTA stands for count
all.
Sumproduct
To calculate the sum of the products of corresponding numbers in one or more ranges, use
Excel's powerful SUMPRODUCT function.
1. For example, the SUMPRODUCT function below calculates the total amount spent.
Note: the SUMPRODUCT function performs this calculation: (2 * 1000) + (4 * 250) + (4 *
100) + (2 * 50) = 3500.
2. The ranges must have the same dimensions or Excel will display the #VALUE! error
4. The SUMPRODUCT function treats any entries that are not numeric as if they were zeros.
Nested If
The IF function can be nested, when you have multiple conditions to meet. The FALSE
value is being replaced by another If function to make a further test. For example, look at the
formula below.
1d. If cell A1 equals another value, the function returns No Valid Score
2c. If cell A1 is greater than 20 and less or equal to 30, the function returns 1400
This example teaches you how to simulate the roll of two dice in Excel. If you are in a hurry,
simply download the Excel file.
Note: the instructions below do not teach you how to format the worksheet. We assume that
you know how to change font sizes, font styles, insert rows and columns, add borders, change
background colors, etc.
1. At the moment, each cell contains the letter l (lowercase). With a Wingdings font style,
these l's look like dots.
2. Enter the RANDBETWEEN function in cell C2
3. Enter the formula shown below into the yellow cells. If we roll 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, these cells
should contain a dot
4 Enter the formula shown below into the red cells. If we roll 4, 5 or 6, these cells should
contain a dot
5. Enter the formula shown below into the blue cells. If we roll 6, these cells should contain a
dot.
6. Enter the formula shown below into the gray cell. If we roll 1, 3 or 5, this cell should contain a
dot.
8. Change the font color of cell C2 and cell G2 to green (so the numbers are not visible).
3 Cell References: Cell references in Excel are very important. Understand the difference
between relative, absolute and mixed reference, and you are on your way to success.
Cell References:
When you copy a formula, Excel automatically adjusts the cell references for each new cell
the formula is copied to.
For example, cell A3 below contains a formula which adds the value of cell A2 to the value of
cell A1
When you copy this formula to cell B3 (select cell A3, press CTRL + c, select cell B3, press
CTRL + v), the formula will automatically reference the values in column B.
If you don't want this but instead want to copy the exact formula (without changing the cell
references), execute the following easy steps.
Result:
Both cell A3 and cell B3 contain the exact same formula now.
3D-reference
A 3D-reference in Excel refers to the same cell or range on multiple worksheets. First, we'll look at
the alternative.
Result.
4. This is quite a lot of work. Instead of doing this, use the following 3D-
reference: North:South!B2 as the argument for the SUM function.
5. If you add worksheets between North and South, this worksheet is automatically
included in the formula in cell B2.
External References
2. In the Company workbook, select cell B2 and type the equal sign =
3. On the View tab, click Switch Windows and then click North.
3. In the North workbook, select cell B2 and type a +
5. Remove the $ symbols in the formula of cell B2 and copy the formula to the other cells.
Result.
Alert
Close all workbooks. Change a number in the workbook of a division. Close all workbooks
again. Open the Company workbook.
Edit Links
On the Data tab, in the Connections group, click the Edit links symbol to launch the Edit
Links dialog box.
1. If you didn't update the links, you can still update the links here. Select a workbook
and click Update Values to update the links to this workbook. Note how the Status
changes to OK.
2. If you don't want to display the alert and update the links automatically, Click Startup
Prompt, select the third option, and click OK.
Hyperlinks
To create a link to an existing file or web page, execute the following steps.
1a. To create a link to an existing Excel file, select a file (use the Look in drop-down list, if
necessary).
1b. To create a link to a web page, type the Text to display, Address, and click OK.
Result:
Note: if you want to change the text that appears when you hover over the link, click
ScreenTip...
Result:
Note: if you want to change the text that appears when you hover over the link, click
ScreenTip...
4 Date & Time: To enter a date in Excel, use the "/" or "-" characters. To enter a time, use the
":" (colon). You can also enter a date and a time in one cell.
DateDif, Weekdays, Days until Birthday, Time Sheet, Last Day of the Month, Holidays, Quarter, Day of
the Year.
DateDif
To get the number of days, weeks or years between two dates, use the DATEDIF function. The
DATEDIF function has three arguments.
1. Fill in "d" for the third argument to get the number of days between two dates.
Note: =A2-A1 produces the exact same result!
2. Fill in "m" for the third argument to get the number of months between two dates.
3. Fill in "y" for the third argument to get the number of years between two dates.
4. Fill in "yd" for the third argument to ignore years and get the number of days between
two dates.
5. Fill in "md" for the third argument to ignore months and get the number of days
between two dates.
6. Fill in "ym" for the third argument to ignore years and get the number of months
between two dates.
Important note: the DATEDIF function returns the number of complete days, months
or years. This may give unexpected results when the day/month number of the second
date is lower than the day/month number of the first date. See the example below.
The difference is 6 years. Almost 7 years! Use the following formula to return 7 years.
Weekdays
Learn how to get the day of the week of a date in Excel and how to get the number of
weekdays/working days between two dates.
Weekday Function
2. You can also use the TEXT function to display the day of the week.
3. Create a custom date format (dddd) to display the day of the week.
Networkdays Function
2. If you supply a list of holidays, the NETWORKDAYS function returns the number
of workdays (weekends and holidays excluded) between two dates.
4. Dates are stored as numbers in Excel and count the number of days since January 0,
1900. Instead of supplying a list, supply an array constant of the numbers that
represent these dates. To achieve this, select E1:E2 in the formula and press F9.
Workday Function
Again, if you supply a list of holidays, the WORKDAY function returns the date
before or after a specified number of workdays (weekends and holidays excluded)
5 Text: Excel has many functions to offer when it comes to manipulating text strings.
6 Lookup & Reference: Learn all about Excel's lookup & reference functions such as the
VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, MATCH, INDEX and CHOOSE function.
STANDARD WORKSHEET
Excel Environment
Working with Excel Window
The Excel Window is divided into five distinct areas:
1. Toolbars are located at the top under the Main Menu Bar
2. Formula Bar is located under the toolbars
3. The current Worksheet is the main area of the window
4. Task Pane is the panel to the right of the Worksheet
5. Status Bar is located at the bottom of the window
You can put your mouse over a button or area to see the Tool Tip description
of that button or area.
FILTER
CONDITIONAL FORMATING
Copy Source Data Number Formatting
Functions
Count Hotel Guests in Date Range