Microsoft Excel 101

Introduction

Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a spreadsheet-application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables and a macro programming language called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). It has been the most widely-used spreadsheet application available for these platforms since version 5 in 1993. Excel is included as part of Microsoft Office. The version shown in the graphic above and which we’ll be discussing in this course is 2007. Most concepts will translate back in case you have an older version on your computer.

Basic Concepts

  1. Naming your document (workbook):
  2. Click the floppy disk icon.
  3. The first time you do this a box will appear allowing you to type a name. This new name will now appear in the “Title Bar”, replacing “Book1”.
  4. Each subsequent time you do this the document will be re-saved with that same name over the top of the older version.
  5. Document will also be auto-saved every 10 minutes. This time setting can be changed by performing the following steps:
  6. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options.
  7. Click Save.
  8. Select the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes check box.
  9. In the minutes list, specify how often you want the program to save your data and the program state.
  10. Tip The amount of new information that the recovered file contains depends on how frequently a Microsoft Office program saves the recovery file. For example, if the recovery file is saved only every 15 minutes, your recovered file won't contain your last 14 minutes of work before the power failure or other problem occurred.
  11. A workbook contains several worksheets. When you create a new workbook there are 3 worksheets. By default these sheets are named “Sheet 1”, “Sheet 2”, and “Sheet 3”.
  12. Working with worksheets:
  13. Place your mouse cursor over the tab
  14. Right-click
  15. Numerous options (“Rename”, “Insert”, “Delete”, etc.) will be covered later in class.
  16. Worksheets are divided into a grid of cells created by columns and rows.
  17. Columns: Named alphabetically.
  18. Rows: Named numerically.
  19. Individual cells are named by the column and row in which they are located; column letter followed by row number. (Example: A1 is the active cell in the graphic above)
  20. To learn more:
  21. http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/excel/
  22. http://www.pcc.edu/resources/computer-labs/cascade/documents/microsoft-excel.pdf

Taught by Tony Derricott, Page 1