Excel Discussion

[Frank]

(04-26-2013 04:05 PM)valelli Wrote:  i use excel len, but my spreadsheets are very basic, i dont know that much about them!

There's only one way to solve that, Val (other than going on a college course) . Make a point of using Excel every day, and learn something new every day. My first introduction to a spreadsheet was in the 80's when I went on a Smart course. Never heard of Smart? Neither had I , it was a DOS based spreadsheet before the days of Windows. It was clunky, tedious you needed to remember loads of shortcut keys. It made Excel look like a Noddy book.

There's nothing more intimidating than an empty, blank spreadsheet. Where to start ? What can it do? Why bother? Most people ask themselves that question, and take the easy way out and don't bother. When Excel came out I taught myself by using Excels Help function.

Here's lesson number 1.

There's a lot of empty cells arranged in rows and columns. The cells can contain either numbers, text, formulas or nothing.

Every cell has an ADRESS. The spreadsheet has COLUMNS labelled in grey at the top A,B,C,D etc and ROWS labelled 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc.

So you type "hello" in the cell on row 6 and in column C. You've just put some text in cell address C6. If you left click on cell C6 you have selected it. Notice 3 things.

1. The word hello appears at the top of the spreadsheet in what is called the FORMULA BAR. This both shows you what's in the selected cell, and allows you to change it, or start from scratch and enter hello there instead of in the cell.

2. If you RIGHT click on the cell, you get a context menu which allows you to do stuff with the contents of that cell.

3. If you first left click on the cell and move your mouse pointer so it points exactly to the bottom right hand corner of the cell, the pointer changes to a cross hairs and you should notice a tiny square there in the corner, called a drag bar. This is an easy way of copying the cell contents across, up or down to multiple cells in a straight line. Whilst holding down the left mouse button over this tiny drag bar, move your mouse up down left or right to see it copy to those cells.
If you already knew this, you knew more than you thought! You can throw your calculator in the bin, since you are on your way!