IT 110: ICT and

Communication Skills

Introduction to Microsoft Excel

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 Content
 What is Excel  Tabs
 Starting Excel  Rows and Columns
 Excel Window  Cells
 Ribbon Menu System  Quick access toolbar

 “File” Menu
 Working with text
 Functions
 Creating a New Workbook
 Autofill
 Opening an Existing Workbook
 Sorting
 Saving a Workbook for the First Time
 Charts
 Saving a Workbook

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 What is Microsoft Excel?
 Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that can be used for storing, organizing and
manipulating data.

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 Starting Microsoft Excel
 You may start Microsoft
Excel by locating the
Microsoft Office shortcut
folder, and selecting the
Microsoft Word shortcut.
 Note: The location of this
shortcut will vary
depending upon your
chosen configuration and
installation settings.
However, it will most
commonly be located in a
“Microsoft Office” folder
created during the program
installation.

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 The Excel Window
Tabs
Quick Access Toolbar Title bar Column Heading

Formula Bar

Cell Number Box

Active Cell
Scroll bar

Row Number

Sheet Name

Status bar
Horizontal Scroll Bar View buttons Zoom slider
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 Microsoft Excel - Ribbon

 The first thing to notice is the Ribbon running right across the
top. The Ribbon is supposed to be more intuitive than drop-
down menus. Emphasis is placed on the tools and options
appropriate to what you're doing. Here's a closer look at the
Ribbon when Excel first starts (it's split in half, here):

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 Tabs
 Other tabs are: Insert, Page Layout, Formulas,
Data, Review and View. (In the image above,
there's also a Developer tab. If you don't do any
programming then you don't have to worry
about this tab.)
 In the top left of the Ribbon in Excel 2016
there's a menu called File:

• Click that, and you'll see all the file operations:

New, Open, Save, Exit, etc
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 Excel Rows and Columns
 Spreadsheets are displayed in a grid layout. The
letters across the top are Column headings. To
highlight an entire Column, click on any of the
letters. The image below shows the B Column
highlighted.
 If you look down the left side of the grid, you'll
see numbers, which start at number 1 at the Column
very top and go down to over a million. (The
exact number of rows and columns are
1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. You've
never going to need this many!) You can click a
number to highlight an entire Row. If you look at
the image below, you'll see that Row 5 has been
highlighted.
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 Cells
 Spreadsheets are all about individual Cells.
 A Cell is a letter combined with a number. So if you combine the B

column with Row 5, you get Cell B5. Combine Column D with Row
5 and you get Cell D5.
 To make a start, we'll create this really simple spreadsheet:
 All we're going to be doing here is entering some text and some

numbers. We're not adding anything up yet.

 The Undo feature, just in case you make a mistake. The Undo

option is the left curved arrow, right at the top of your screen. This
one for Excel 2007 users:

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 Quick Access Toolbar
 And this one for Excel 2010 users:
 Click the left curved arrow to Undo something, and

click the right curved arrow to redo it. The Undo

arrow also has a dropdown box. Click the small
arrow next to Undo to see the following:
 This list is for multiple Undo's. Move your mouse

down the list and click to undo several steps at once

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 Standard Toolbar
1. New - Select FileNew from the menu bar, or press CTRL+N, or click the New
button to create a new workbook.
2. Open - Click FileOpen from the menu bar, or press CTRL+O, or click the
Open folder button to open an existing workbook.
3. Save - The first time you save a workbook, select FileSave
4. As and name the file. After the file is named click FileSave, or CTRL+S, or
the Save button on the standard toolbar.
5. Print - Click the Print button to print the worksheet.
6. Print Preview - This feature will allow you to preview the worksheet before it
prints.
7. Spell Check - Use the spell checker to correct spelling errors on the
worksheet.
8. Cut, Copy, Paste, and Format Painter - These actions will be explained to
you later in this lesson.
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 Data Entry
 You can enter various kinds of data in a cell.
1. Numbers: Your numbers can be from the entire range of numeric values:
whole numbers (example, 25), decimals (example, 25.67) and scientific
notation (example, 0.2567E+2). Excel displays scientific notation automatically
if you enter a number that is too long to be viewed in its entirety in a cell. You
may also see number signs (# # # # ##) when a cell entry is too long.
Widening the column that contains the cell with the above signs will allow you
to read the number.
2. Text: First select the cell in which data has to be entered and type the text.
Press ENTER key to finish your text entry. If you have numbers to be treated as
text use an apostrophe (‘) as the first character. You cannot do calculations
with these kind of data entry.
3. Date and Time: When you enter dates and times, Excel converts these
entries into serial numbers and kept as background information. However, the
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 Working with Cells
 Click inside of cell A1 on your spreadsheet, and do the
following:
 Type the word "Numbers" (with no quotation marks)

 Hit the Enter key on your keyboard

 The active cell will move down one, to cell A2

 Type the number 3, and again hit the Enter key on your

keyboard
 The active cell will move down one, to cell A3

 Now put the number 6 into cell A3, and the number 9 in cell

A4
 After you have typed the number 9, and hit the Enter key,

you should see that cell A5 is now the active cell.

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 How to Edit Text in a Cell
 To change the text in cell A1, you can just click inside of the
cell and start typing. Anything you had there previously
would be erased. But if you just want to edit the text (if
you've made a spelling mistake, for example), then this is
no good. If you want to keep most of the text, and just
make minor changes, then you need to do something else.
 In the image below, you can see what's known as the

Formula Bar. The Formula Bar is like a long textbox that

you can click inside and start typing.

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 Editing text
 To edit a Cell in Excel, first click inside the cell
you want to edit (A1 for us). Then click inside
the formula bar. Notice where your cursor is
now:
 The second image shows that the cell A1 is

active, but the cursor is inside of the formula

bar.
 With the cursor in the Formula Bar, try

changing the text "Numbers" to "Add these

Numbers". Press the Enter key when you've
made the changes. Your spreadsheet should
look like ours below: IT 100 15
 Editing text
 Notice that the active cell is now A2, and that the
Formula Bar has a 3 in it.
 However, there's a problem. There's not enough room in
cell A1 for our new text. Part of it seems to be in the B
column.
 The solution is to widen the whole of Column A. Try this:
 Move your mouse up to the start of the A Column
 The pointer will change shape and now be a black arrow
 Move your mouse over the line that separates Column A
and Column B
 Your mouse pointer will change shape again, this time to
a cross with arrows
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 Selecting Cells
 Before a cell can be modified or formatted, it must first be
selected (highlighted). Refer to the table below for selecting
groups of cells.

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 Resizing rows and columns
 When you see the new shape, hold down your left
mouse button
 Keep the left mouse button held down, and drag
your cross to the right
 Once you have all the text in the A column, let go
of the left mouse button. The images below show
the process in action:
 You can make the height of the Rows bigger or
smaller by using exactly the same technique.

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Resizing rows and columns cont.
…
 There are two ways to resize rows and columns.
1. Resize a row by dragging the line below the label of the
row you would like to resize. Resize a column in a similar
manner by dragging the line to the right of the label
corresponding to the column you want to resize.
2. Click the row or column label and select
FormatRowHeight or FormatColumnWidth from
the menu bar to enter a numerical value for the height of
the row or width of the column.

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 How to save your work in Excel
 To save your spreadsheet, do the following.
 Click File Menu in the very top left of Excel.
 When you click the File Menu, you'll see the options list
appear
 But to save your work, click the Save option. You will then
see another dialogue box appear - Save As
 Browse to the specific location in your computer where
you want to save the file
 Give the File Name and Click Save
 Notice the "Save as Type" box below the file name. The
type is a XLSX file, and this is new from Excel 2007. The
old ending was XLS. Excel 2007 and later can open older
XLS files, but previous versions of Excel can't open XLSX
files
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 How to Merge Cells
 To merge cells, do the following.
 Type the words Shopping Bill into cell A1 of a spreadsheet
 Highlight the cells A1, B1 and C1
 On the Alignment panel of the Excel Ribbon, locate the

"Merge and Center" item:

 Click the down arrow to see the following options:
 Click on "Merge and Center".
 Your three cells will then become one - A1, to be exact!

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 Entering Simple Addition Formula

 Here's our spreadsheet:

 Our first total will go in cell B9.

 Excel needs to know which cells you want to add up. Look

at the numbers for the Monday column. We have a 1 in cell

B4, a 7 in cell B5, an 8 in cell B6, and a 1 in cell B7. So we
want the answer to this:
B4 + B5 + B6 + B7
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 Adding up in Excel
 To let Excel know that this is what we want, try this:
 Click inside cell B9, which is where we want the answer to

appear
 Once you've clicked on cell B9, click into the formula bar at

the top
 Type this: =B4 + B5 + B6 + B7

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 Function instead of a Formula
 Functions can be a more efficient way of performing
mathematical operations than formulas. Specifically, in
 many cases, a function will simplify formulas that you can

type in manually, such as average or sum.

 . EXAMPLE: If you wanted to add the values of cells D1

through D10, you could type the formula

’=D1+D2+D3+D4+D5+D6+D7+D8+D9+D10’, or a shorter
way would be to use the SUM function and simply type
’=SUM(D1:D10)’.

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 Other Functions
 The following table contains the definitions and examples of
several other available functions:

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 The Excel SUM function
• You saw a simple way to add up in the previous section. Enter an
equals sign, followed by the cells you want Excel to add up:
= B4 + B5 + B6 + B7
 The SUM function is used to add things up, and saves you the
bother of typing out lots of cell names and numbers. It looks like
this:
=SUM( )
 In between the round brackets, you type what you want Excel to
add up. Look at our spreadsheet again:

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 SUM() Function
 We want to add up the numbers under the Monday
heading, and place the answer in cell B9.
 So with cell B9 selected again, click into your formula bar. If

you're following along from the previous section, you should

have this in cell B9
 Type an equals sign first, then the letter SUM(B4,B5,B6,B7)
 Now press the Enter key on your keyboard. Excel will add

the right bracket, and work out the SUM for you:

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 SUM() Function
 An easier way to add up number with the SUM function is to
use a colon (:) The colon is a shorthand way of adding up
consecutive cells. Instead of typing out all those cell
references like this:
=SUM(B4 , B5 , B6 , B7)
 You can just type out the first cell reference, then a colon,

then the last cell reference. Like this:

=Sum(B4: B7)

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 AutoFill
 If everything went well, you should have an answer of 17 in
cell B9. Fortunately, we can use AutoFill for the rest of the
answers.
 Place your mouse pointer to the bottom right of cell B9
 The pointer will turn into a thin black cross:

• Hold down your left mouse button

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 Autofill cont.…
 Keep it held down, and drag your mouse to cell H9:

• With your mouse pointer over cell H9, let go of the left
button. Excel will AutoFill the rest of the formulas. It uses
the same formula from cell B9 to get the answers, and just
alters all the cell references. Without AutoFill, you'd have to
type it all out yourself!

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 Copy and Paste
 Highlight the cells A4, A5, A6 and A7 from previous section.
 Locate the Clipboard panel in the Ribbon at the top of the

page (on the Home menu)

 From the Clipboard panel, click Copy

You'll see some moving lines surrounding your highlighted

cells - the so-called marching ants!

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 Copy and Paste cont.…
 Once you see the marching ants, click into cell A15
 To paste the copied text over, simply press the Enter key on

your keyboard
 You spreadsheet should now look something like ours below:

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 Sorting Data in Excel
 To make a start, you need to create the spreadsheet below.
You don't need to use the same colours as ours, but
reproduce the data and the headings exactly as they are in
this one:

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 Sorting cont.…
 Highlight the spreadsheet to look like image below

 To sort your BBC 1 viewing figures, do the following:

 From the Excel tabs at the top of the screen, click Data:
 From the Sort & Filter panel, click Sort
 A dialogue box appears

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 Sorting cont.…
The Sort By drop-down list seems empty. Click the down arrow to reveal the
columns you selected:

 We want to sort this by the values in the Millions column. So select Millions
from the Sort by list.
 Sort On is OK for us - it has Values. But click to see the options in the drop
down list:

 Values is the one you'll use the most. Once we have a Sort By and Sort
On option selected, we can then move on to the Order.
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 Sorting cont.…
 Click the down arrow to see the options on the Order list:

 Select Largest to Smallest. Your Sort dialogue box should

then look like this:

 If you clicked OK, your data would be sorted.

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 Chart

 To start making your chart, highlight the BBC1 programmes,

and the viewing figures. If you have just finished the sorting
section, this data should still be highlighted, and look like this:

 With your programmes and the viewing figures highlighted, do

this:
 From the tabs on the Excel Ribbon, click on Insert

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 Chart cont.….
 Locate the Charts panel:

 For this first one, we'll create a Column Chart. So click the
down arrow on the Column item of the Chart Panel. You'll
see a list of available charts to choose from. Select the first
one, the chart highlighted below (2D Column):
 Chart will be displayed

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 Keyboard Shortcuts
 Keyboard shortcuts can save time and the effort of switching from the
keyboard to the mouse to execute simple commands. Print this list of
Excel keyboard shortcuts and keep it at your computer desk for a quick
reference

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End...

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