MS Excel Tutorial - Advanced
MS Excel Tutorial - Advanced
What you will do: Microsoft® Excel 2002 gives you and your students the ability to gather data, create
worksheets and reports, analyze results, and make your findings available to others
on the Web. Excel can help you manage your grading and attendance records, and
9 Explore the
your students can use Excel for data analysis or data charting.
features of Excel
2002
Assume, for example, that you are teaching an integrated science and history course
9 Create a blank with another teacher. You want your students to understand how the physical world
workbook and a influences the course of history by studying the shipwreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
workbook from a and how the ship’s destiny was altered by weather. Your students will use Excel 2002
template to create worksheets and reports that display and analyze data about shipwrecks,
9 Format a how water and weather conditions affect survival rates, and analyze data about
workbook weather patterns and wave size.
9 Apply formulas to
a workbook This chapter shows how you can use Excel 2002 to perform the following tasks:
9 Create a chart • Create and add data to a workbook. Your students can track and analyze
9 Import data to a static or changing data.
workbook
9 Share a workbook • Use templates. You can use templates to create workbooks that have a
9 Create similar structure, or that use the same formulas.
refreshable Web
• Import data. You can import data from a variety of sources. When you
queries
import data from the Web, you can create a refreshable Web query to
automatically update the spreadsheet when the source data changes.
• Work with numbers, formulas, and functions. You can integrate complex
formulas into a workbook so that data can be calculated automatically.
• Create charts and tables. You can create PivotChart® and PivotTable®
dynamic views to display complex information in a way that is easy to
understand.
• Share files. You can make workbooks available so that they can be created
and managed collaboratively.
• Protect files. You can add password protection to files to prevent them
from being modified or deleted.
0
Excel 2002
• Refreshable Web queries. You can add a Web query from a frequently
updated Web site to a worksheet, and have the Web query automatically
refresh. A Web query is a query that retrieves data stored on the Internet or
your intranet.
• Smart Tags. You can use Smart Tags in Excel to help you format items that
you have pasted from the clipboard, or automatically look up financial
information about stock symbols. For more information about Smart Tags,
You can create your refer to the Introduction to this book.
own Smart Tags to be
used with Office XP.
Smart tags can be
used to integrate
information and data
from other Office
applications, Web
pages, and other
sources. For more
information about
creating Smart Tags,
refer to the Smart Tag
SDK at
http://msdn.microsoft
.com/office/
• Error checking. Excel 2002 checks formulas automatically when they are
entered, and gives you options for correcting the formula, through the use of
a Smart Tag.
Speech playback and
speech recognition
You can use the
Excel 2002 Speech
Playback feature to
read back data in a
worksheet. You can
also enter data in a
worksheet by using
speech recognition.
These features may
require additional
hardware and
memory for your
computer. Check the
system requirements
at the beginning of
this book.
Customize Toolbars
You can customize
Excel 2002 by adding
and modifying
toolbars and
command menus,
and creating and
modifying keyboard
shortcuts. For
example, you can use
large toolbar icons.
For more information,
refer to Excel 2002
Help.
Current
worksheet
New Workbook
task pane
Sheet
navigation
buttons
If you are new to Excel and need information about navigating an Excel workbook,
refer to In and Out of the Classroom with Office 2000.
To create a new blank workbook, you can open Excel and then choose the type of file
you want from the New Workbook task pane on the right side of the Excel window.
Alternatively, you can create a workbook from a template.
Templates are useful for creating workbooks that require complicated formatting or
formulas, because you can use the same template to create more than one
workbook. For example, you can use a grade book template to create several grade
books without re-entering the data and formulas. Templates are included with
Excel 2002; you can also find them at http://www.microsoft.com by clicking the
“Templates at Microsoft.com” option on the bottom of the New Workbook task pane.
The task pane is the You can also create your own templates.
pane on the right side
of the Excel window. It
opens automatically
in some situations
that require you to
choose from a list of
options, for example
when you create a
new workbook. The
task pane is in a small
window, which allows
you to use these
commands while still
working on your file.
• Add data manually. This is useful when you enter data often or when you
use a source of information that is not easily copied from another file.
• Import data. You can import from the Web by using a Web query or from
other sources by using the Data Connection Wizard. For more information on
the Data Connection Wizard, refer to Excel Help.
• Copy data from another file. You can use a file that contains information,
such as a table with weather data over the course of a month, and copy it
into a workbook for use as a data source to create charts or other analysis.
Your students are studying the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and how weather
conditions might have affected the wreck. As a first step in this project, your students
create a simple workbook from a Web page that shows the water surface
temperature from many different sources over a month. The workbook contains a
large amount of data that can be arranged and analyzed in many different ways.
5. On the Web page, under Specific Data Sets, select the Surface Water
check box.
7. Click Get Data. The Web page appears in the window with yellow arrows
next to content that can be imported.
8. Click the yellow arrow next to the table with the data (the second arrow
down), and then click Import.
9. In the Import Data dialog box, click OK. It may take a few minutes for
the data to appear in the worksheet.
The data is imported as a table into the worksheet. Check the formatting
to make sure that the data was imported correctly.
10. On the File menu, click Save as, and then save the file as
Schoolweather.xls.
A Web query is a query that retrieves data stored on your school intranet or the
Internet. By using Web queries in Excel, you can populate a workbook with
refreshable data from a Web site. This means that when the data on the Web
site changes, the data in your workbook changes automatically. You can update
data from a Web site without re-entering the data into your Excel workbook.
Next, your students create a Web query with information from a weather buoy in
Lake Superior in the path of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and set the query to refresh
so that they can see the changes in temperature day to day, which they can later
analyze and chart.
2. On the Data menu, point to Import External Data, and then click New
Web Query.
3. In the Address bar of the New Web Query dialog box, type the URL of
the Web site that contains the information you will be importing, and
then click Go. For this example, type
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.phtml?$station=45006
Note You can also choose a Web site from the drop-down menu in the top
of the dialog box.
4. Click the yellow arrow next to the table you want to use, and then click
Import. For this example, select the table with data in the section
labeled “Previous 24 observations” (below the Continuous Winds
section).
5. Select the range of cells in which you want the data to appear, and then
click OK. By default, on a blank workbook, Excel places the data in the
upper left corner of the workbook.
6. On the File menu, click Save As, and name the workbook Buoy.xls.
Note When you paste Web page data into Excel, you can keep the data
static or make it refreshable by clicking Paste Options and clicking
Create Refreshable Web Query.
A spinning icon appears in the status bar to indicate that the query is
running. Double-click the icon to check the status of the query.
You can also set the query to refresh automatically, in a number of minutes.
To set the query to refresh automatically in a number of minutes, in the
External Data Range Properties dialog box, in the Refresh Control section,
click the box next to Refresh every, and then select the number of minutes.
Note If the data returned to your worksheet after a refresh isn’t what you
expected, check the Web page you are querying to make sure it is in
the same location and that it presents the data in the same way as
when you created the query.
Using formulas
The AutoSum button In this example, you will take weather data from the Great Lakes region, and
in Excel 2002 now calculate the average temperature over a period of time.
gives you the choice
of many common
formulas in a drop-
down menu. This new
Excel 2002 feature
To add an Average function to a workbook
makes it easy to
create formulas in a 1. Open Buoy.xls, and then place the cursor in the cell at the bottom of the
workbook. For more
information about the
ATMP field.
AutoSum feature,
refer to Excel Help. 2. On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow on the right side of the
AutoSum button , click AVERAGE, and then click OK.
3. Make sure that the entire range of cells in that column is highlighted,
Excel 2002 can help and then press ENTER to accept the average formula.
you write formulas
with a feature called 4. The cell now contains the average temperature for that 24-hour period,
screen tips. When you
begin to write a and will automatically change every day that the Web query is refreshed.
formula, for example
“=SUM(“, a screen tip For more information about formulas in Excel, refer to “Adding formulas to a
appears that helps
you to complete the
worksheet” in the tutorial In and Out of the Classroom with Office 2000
formula. This makes Professional.
writing your own
formulas much easier.
Filling cells
Your students have now created a large workbook with weather data from many
sources over the period of a week or month. They can now analyze the data in
different ways. For example, your students can sort the data by the school where
it was collected, and then add an average function in the temperature column to
see what the average temperature was for the month for that school.
In Excel 2002, your students can automatically fill cells with data without
manually entering data and formulas into cells. This is especially useful when
you have many rows or columns of data and you need to add an existing formula
to those cells.
Excel provides several tools that assist you in verifying the accuracy of your data
analysis. You can find and correct problems with formulas by using the following
features:
• Watch windows. You can watch a cell or range of cells that are out of view
to monitor how they change based on other formulas you may be working
on. A watch window is a window that stays open and shows the current value
of a cell that you cannot see in the current Excel window.
• Formula error checker. When you enter a formula in a cell, Excel 2002
automatically checks it for errors. If there is an error in a formula, you can
click the exclamation point Smart Tag to display options for correcting the
error.
• Formula auditing toolbar. This toolbar contains buttons for checking for
errors in formulas, and for showing and hiding a watch window.
• Evaluate formula dialog box. You can use this tool in Excel 2002 to
evaluate formulas and their results before releasing a final version of a
workbook.
• To see how the formula error checker aids you in entering formulas, enter a
flawed formula, such as =1/0 or =AVERGE(B1:B3), in a blank cell of a
workbook.
Click the Smart Tag, and a menu opens that gives you options for correcting the
formula, such as Help on this error and Show calculation steps.
A data table is a range of cells that shows how changing certain values in your
formulas affects the results of the formulas. Data tables provide a shortcut for
calculating multiple versions of a formula in one operation and a way to view and
compare the results of all of the different variations together on your worksheet.
One-variable data tables. For example, use a one-variable data table if you
want to see the correlation between wind speed and wave height.
Two-variable data tables. A two-variable data table can show how different
water temperature and salinity relate to the rate of decomposition.
Charting Data
You can create charts in Excel for a visually appealing and clear representation of
data. Charts can help your students see comparisons, patterns, and trends in data.
For example, they can quickly analyze water temperature, air temperature and wind
speed over a period of time without focusing on several columns of data.
Excel makes it easy to create charts from data in a workbook and there are many
chart types to choose from in Excel, including bar, pie, area and bubble charts. You
can create a chart, and then change the chart type later. For example, you can create
a bar chart from a range of data, and later decide to use a pie chart instead. To make
that change, you simply change the formatting of the chart by right-clicking the chart
and then clicking Chart on the drop-down menu, or clicking Chart Type in the Chart
menu. You can also expand the data range or add new data, and refresh the chart
instead of regenerating it.
To create a chart
1. Open Buoy.xls.
3. Hold down CTRL, select the entire range of data in the ATMP and WTMP
columns, and then release CTRL. By holding down CTRL, you can select
rows, columns, and cells that are not adjacent.
5. Select the chart type you want and the chart sub-type, and then click
Next.
There are many chart types to choose from, including column, line, bar, and
scatter (xy). For this exercise, choose a line graph.
Note You can click Finish after choosing the chart type, and the Chart
Wizard creates a chart with the default values and adds it to the
present worksheet as an object.
7. In step 3 (Chart Options), type a name for the graph, and then in the
Category (X) axis text box, type Time and in the Value (Y) axis text box,
type Temperature. Click Next.
8. In step 4 (Chart Location), page, make sure that the As object In option
is selected, and that Sheet1 is selected from the drop-down list. Click
Finish, and a chart appears in your worksheet.
You can move and resize the chart, and you can change any options you set
in the Chart Wizard by right-clicking on the chart and selecting one of the
formatting options. For example, if you right-click in the white space of a
chart, and then select Source Data, you can name the lines in a line graph
so that they appear in the legend.
PivotTable reports
A PivotTable enables you to highlight data that meets specific criteria while
hiding the remainder. PivotTables make it easy to analyze large quantities of
data that contain both numeric and nonnumeric data.
One reason PivotTables are so useful is that they are flexible. After you have
completed the collection of your data in a spreadsheet, you can manipulate the
organization of the data by rearranging, or pivoting, the layout based on the row
and column headings you choose. You can change the layout at any time by
adding or removing headings while your original data set remains intact. Your
A PivotChart report is data analysis can then be graphically expressed by using the PivotChart feature.
similar to a PivotTable
report in structure
and purpose, but the A PivotTable would probably not be useful in a worksheet with, for example, the
data fields cannot be number of shipwrecks in a certain area per year, because that information is
moved. PivotChart relatively easy to understand when it is presented in worksheet form. A
reports are useful
when you want to PivotTable would be useful if you had a worksheet with much more data, for
display information example weather data collected from different sites, and with many different
from a complex types of weather data — temperature, barometric pressure, precipitation, and so
workbook, but do not on. In this case, a PivotTable report enables you to highlight the information you
want to allow
students to change find most useful and to see relationships between different types of data.
the layout.
For example, your class is studying the water temperature recorded by area
schools to see how many days a year would be good for diving for a shipwreck.
Your class has determined that the best water temperature is between 10 and
11 degrees Celsius. With a PivotTable, you can take a table with data from many
different schools for an entire month, and see how many days a month each
location had a temperature that was ideal for diving.
To create a PivotTable
1. Open the workbook that you created with imported Web data,
Schoolweather.xls. Check to make sure that all of the rows and columns
are displayed correctly.
2. Select the entire worksheet, and then, on the Data menu, click
PivotTable and PivotChart reports. The PivotTable and PivotChart
Wizard opens.
4. On the next screen, the selected range appears in the text box. Click
Next, because you are creating a PivotTable from the entire worksheet.
1. In the Field List window, click and drag the YYYYMMDD field into the
second row of the left column of the PivotTable report. Click and drag
the WATMP (water temperature) field into the upper left row of the
report, and the SCHOOL field next to the WATMP field.
2. Click the arrow next to the WATMP field heading. A drop-down list
appears, listing all the values for that field. Scroll down the list, and
select the boxes for the values 10 through 10.9, and then click OK.
3. The PivotTable is now arranged to show how many days each school had
of each temperature in this month of data. The right column shows the
total number of days between 10 and 10.9 degrees for each school.
Note Now that you have created a PivotTable, you can create a PivotChart
report to display the information in a non-interactive format. For more
information about PivotChart reports, see Excel Help.
Sharing Files
Excel 2002 allows you to easily share files with others. You can collaborate by
sending workbooks for review, creating forms, and adding password protection to a
file. Students who are collaborating together can easily track who added edits,
comments, and additional data to a worksheet, use forms to perform the data entry,
and secure files that contain private information.
You can use the Send to Mail Recipient (for Review) command to send a file for
others to review. You can have your students collaborate on a project by sending
workbooks to each other and accepting and commenting on the changes. You
can also have your students send drafts of workbooks to you for review during
the process of creating their analysis.
When you send a file for review, a review request form is created automatically
with the following information:
• A follow-up flag.
• Message text for the reviewer. This text varies depending on the location of
the file.
You can include a file in a review request in one of three ways, depending on the
location of the file:
• If the file resides in a shared location, such as a network server, the review
request contains a link to the shared location. You also have the option to
include the file as an attachment. If some reviewers do not have access to
the shared location, you may want to attach the file.
When a reviewer receives the file, the reviewing tools are enabled and displayed.
Files returned from reviewers with edits and comments automatically prompt you
to merge changes. You can then use the reviewing tools to accept or reject the
changes. After you’ve received all feedback from the reviewers, or after you
decide to stop accepting feedback, you can choose to end the review cycle. For
more information about sending a file to review, refer to “Reviewing Your
Document” in the Word chapter in this book.
You can save a Microsoft Excel workbook or part of the workbook, such as a
single item on the worksheet, as a Web page and make it available on an HTTP
site, an FTP site, a Web server, or a network server. From there, others can view
or interact with the information. If a workbook is on the Web, students can open
and modify it without needing to access a shared folder and without being
required to open the file as read-only.
You can publish a spreadsheet on the Web to give your students an example of
what their workbooks should look like, or as a source of data for an assignment.
For more information about publishing to the Web, see Excel Help.
If you want to put all of the data in a workbook onto a Web page at one time, you
can put an interactive or non-interactive version of an entire workbook on a Web
page.
Interactive workbooks
When you publish an interactive workbook on a Web page, the result is an HTML
file that contains special components that allow viewers to interact with the
workbook. For example, users can switch between worksheets using a worksheet
selector, manipulate data and formatting, and change formulas in each
worksheet. The interactive components used in the HTML file cannot be opened
and modified in Excel, so you should maintain a master copy of the Excel
workbook that you published so that you can make changes to it and republish
the workbook if necessary.
Non-interactive workbooks
Creating forms
You can use Excel forms to collect information for use in calculations, analysis or
financial documents. You can add information from the form to a database by
using the Template Wizard with data tracking to create a form template. Each
new form created from the template automatically creates a corresponding
record in the database.
For example, you can create a class evaluation to put on the Web for your
students to fill out, and collect the results in a database so they are easy to sort
and manage. You can also create printed forms to use in gathering information
in the field.
You can also use printed Web forms for your students to use to create polls that
cannot be conducted online.
You decide to add password protection to the grading workbook you store on the
school server. You want all the teachers in your school to be able to view the
workbook, but only the teacher with whom you are co-teaching to be able to enter or
change data in the workbook.
3. If you chose Protect Sheet, type a password, and select or clear the
options in the Allow all users of this worksheet to list.
Note If you lose or forget the password, it cannot be recovered. You can,
however, paste the contents of a read-only version of the worksheet
or workbook into a new blank workbook and save it as a different
workbook.
Using AutoRecover
You can protect your work by using the AutoRecover feature to periodically save
a temporary copy of the file you’re working on. To recover work after a power
failure or similar problem, you must have turned on the AutoRecover feature
before the problem occurred. You can set the AutoRecover save interval to occur
more frequently than every 10 minutes (the default setting). For example, if you
set it to save every 5 minutes, you’ll recover more current information than if you
set it to save every 10 minutes.
With AutoRecover on, if an Office program stops responding while you have files
open, you can use the Microsoft Office Application Recovery dialog box and
recovered files will be displayed in the Document Recovery task pane. The data
in the files reflects the last time AutoRecover saved the files. AutoRecover should
not be used as a substitute for manually saving or backing up your files.
To turn AutoRecover on
1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Save tab.
2. Select the Save AutoRecover info every check box, and then select a
time in the number box.
To recover a file
1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Office Tools,
and then click Microsoft Office Application Recovery.
• To attempt to recover the files you were working on, click Recover
Application.
• If you want to close the program, and lose recent changes to the
files, click End Application.
The error that caused the problem can be reported to Microsoft for use in
improving future versions of the program. Click Report problem or Don’t
report problem.
Taking It Further
As you continue to use Excel 2002 in the classroom, you will learn more about the
features available for different classes. As you become more familiar with
Excel 2002, you may want to try these activities:
• Use PivotTable and PivotChart reports to analyze complex data and make
predictions about trends. Your students can analyze and predict
demographic trends by creating PivotChart and PivotTable reports from
census data. To learn more about PivotChart and PivotTable, type
“pivotchart” or “pivottable” in the Type a question for help box. For a tutorial
on analyzing data with Excel see:
http://www.microsoft.com/education/tutorial/default.asp
• Create refreshable Web queries to track data from the Web. You can have
your students track stock or currency prices to make strategic decisions in a
simulated investing lesson. For additional information type “web query” in
the Type a question for help box.
• Make a Web form to use in a poll. Your students can poll students from other
schools and track and analyze the data. For additional information type “web
form” in the Type a question for help box.
• Collect and track statistical data. Your students can gather statistics from
your school’s sports teams and create visual representations of performance
over the year.
• Use watch windows when working with large spreadsheets of data. If your
students have a large spreadsheet and they want to see the effect of
changing a particular value on the result they can use a watch window to
watch a particular cell while they change the values elsewhere in the
spreadsheet. For additional information type “watch window” in the Type a
question for help box.