Microsof Excel is a spreadsheet program. A spreadsheet is a program that can do an incredible number of things. Most often, spreadsheets are used to store numerical and statistical data and do all kinds of things for analysis, reports, and calculations. The limits of what it can do are basically limited to the imagination of the user once the user has grasped how to use the program. So let’s get about understanding how to use it……..
Cells, Locations, Columns, and Rows
When you open Excel, you’ll see a big area with a bunch of lines that make boxes on the screen. Each of those boxes is called a cell, and each one of those cells has a name that dentoes its address or location on the spreadsheet. If you look across the top, you’ll see a row of letters beginning with A at the left and down the far left side is a column of numbers beginning with 1 ath the top. (Rows are horizontal and columns are vertical.) The very upper left cell in the spreadsheet then, is ‘A1′. That’s because if you draw a line up from that cell, it will be in the A column and if you draw a line to the left, it will be in the row with the number 1 all the way to the left. So, that cell is called A1. Simple enough, huh?
What is fascinating about Excel is that you can tell each cell to do many things, as we’ll see in the video. You can put a formula in it or you can tell it to add , subtract, or do mathematical functions with the values of other cells, or you can write a line of text in it, or you can copy what’s in another cell. You can do many, many things, so it takes some thought about what you really want to do with the program before you begin inputting your data. The options are endless. But let’s begin at the beginning.
The simplest thing you can do is put a number in each cell, so type the number 4 in the ‘A1′ cell and hit ‘enter’. (From now on, I’ll just call the cell by its name or location.) The box below it (A2) will be highlighted, so type in the number 5 in that box. Now that you have data in A1 and A2, you have the beginning of what spreadsheets are all about. You can tell other cells on the spreadsheet what to do with the information in those cells. For a better idea, take a look at the video I’ll post here. Click on this link –