Microsoft Excel Essentials: A Beginner's Guide

What is Microsoft Excel?
•Excel is a spreadsheet program from Microsoft
and a component of its Office product group for
business applications. Microsoft Excel enables
users to format, organize and calculate data in a
spreadsheet.

History and future of Excel
•Microsoft released Excel in 1985 under the name
Microsoft Multiplan. Microsoft's spreadsheet
program competed with similar products at the
time, including Lotus 1-2-3 from the Lotus
Development Corp.

•The Title bar section has window controls at the
right end, as in other Microsoft Office programs.
•The Quick Access Toolbar is located all the way to
the left on the title bar. It contains frequently
used commands and can be customized using the
drop-down menu.
•The Ribbon contains all of the tools that you use
to interact with your Microsoft Excel file. The
ribbon has a number of tabs, each of which
contains buttons, which are organized into
groups.

•Contextual tabs are displayed when certain
objects, such as images and charts, are selected.
They contain additional options for modifying
the object.
•the File tab provides a Backstage view of your
document. Backstage view gives you various
options for saving, opening a file, printing, or
sharing your document.

Parts of the Excel window
•Name Box – Displays the current selected cell.
•Formula Bar – Displays the number, text, or
formula that is in the currently selected cell, and
allows you to edit it. It behaves just like a text
box.
•Selected Cell – The selected cell has a dark
border around it.

•Column – Columns run vertically (top to
bottom).
•Column Label – Identifies each column with a
letter. Clicking on a column label selects the
entire column.
•Row – Rows run horizontally (left to right).
•Row Label – Identifies each row with a number.
Clicking on a row label selects the entire row.

•Cell – The intersection of a row and column.
•Worksheets – The worksheets contained in a
workbook are displayed at the bottom-left of the
screen.
•Scroll Bars – Used to view other parts of a
worksheet when the entire worksheet cannot fit
on the screen.

Status Bar
•The Status Bar is located below the document
window area.

Status Bar (left end)
•The left end gives current information about the
spreadsheet.
•When "Ready" appears on the left side of the
Excel status bar, it indicates that the active cell is
ready to receive input or perform actions.

Status Bar (right end)
•At the right end are shortcuts to the different
views that are available. Each view displays the
spreadsheet in a different way, allowing you to
carry out various tasks more efficiently.

Views
•Normal – It simply displays the grid of cells that
make up your spreadsheet.
•Page Layout – Show what your spreadsheet will
look like when printed on paper.
•Page Break Preview – Allows you to add page
breaks to your spreadsheets so you can better
control what parts of the spreadsheets are
printed on each page.

Zoom Slider
•Also at the right end of the Status Bar is the
Zoom Slider. This allows you to adjust how large
the spreadsheet is displayed on the screen. It
does not adjust the actual size of the text – jus
how big or small they are rendered on the
screen.

Understanding Workbooks
•In Microsoft Excel the data you enter, whether it
consists of numbers, text, or formulas, is stored
in a file known as a workbook. Workbooks are
just like huge electronic books with pages (or
sheets) that have been ruled into columns and
rows.

•A worksheet (or page) in a workbook contains
16,384 columns that are labelled using letters of
the alphabet. The first column in a worksheet is
labelled column A, while the last is labelled XFD.

•A worksheet (or page) in a workbook contains
1,048,576 rows that are labelled using numbers
from 1 to 1,048,576.

•Where a column and row intersect we get what
is known as a cell. You enter your data into these
cells. Each cell in a worksheet can hold up to
32,767 characters. Cells are referred to by their
column and row labels.

Cell Address
•For example, the cell we are pointing to is B2 –
this reference is known as the cell address and is
most important as it is frequently used in
commands and formulas.

Active Cell
•When the Status Bar show Ready mode, at least
one cell in the worksheet will be highlighted –
this is known as the active cell. You can have
more than active cell – when this occurs you
have what is known as a range.

Worksheets
•A workbook is made up of pages known as
worksheets. You can have as many sheets in a
workbook as your computer resources can
accommodate.
•Add new Worksheet

Navigating in a File
•Arrow Keys – Move one cell to the right, left, up
or down.
•Tab – Move one cell to the right
•Ctrl+Home – To beginning file
•Ctrl+End – To end of typed information
•Home – Beginning of a line
•End – End of a line

Navigating in a File
•Page Down – Down one screen
•Page Up – Up one screen
•F5 – To a specific page
•Scroll bars – Appear at the right and on the
bottom of the screen. You may click the scroll
arrows, drag the scroll box or click the scroll bar
to move through the document.

Filling a Series
•A series refers to a sequence of ordered entries
in adjacent cells, such as days of the week or
months of the year.
•The fill technique can be used to create these in
a worksheet for you, reducing the amount of
time taken for data entry, and ensuring that the
spelling is correct.

Filling a Series
•Excel provides days and months as special built-
in series that you can access.
To fill a series:
1. Click on the first cell in the series
2. Drag from the fill handle across as many
columns as required

Filling a Series
•As you drag the fill handle across, a tool tip
appears below the fill pointer displaying the
current value in the series. This is really handy
when you want to end on particular month, day
or value.

Freezing Rows and Columns
•When you lay out your data in rows and
columns, it is most likely that your headings end
up at the top or to the left of your data, if you
have a large amount of data, you may find that
when you scroll across or down to particular
cells, the headings scroll out of view. This
problem can be resolved by freezing the rows
and/or columns that hold the headings.

Freezing Rows and Columns
•To freeze panes in a worksheet:
1. Click in the cell below and to the right of the
area you want to freeze/unfreeze
2. Click on the view tab
3. Click on Freeze Panes in the Window group,
the select Freeze Panes

What is Conditional Formatting?
•Conditional formatting is feature in Microsoft
Excel that allows you to apply specific formatting
to your cells according to certain criteria.
•It enables you to make sense of your data and
spot significant trends.

Data Bars
• Data Bars in Excel are an
inbuilt type of conditional
formatting that inserts
colored bars inside a cell to
show how a given cell value
compares to others.

Color Scales
• A Color Scale is a
sequence of smoothly
changing colors that
represent smaller and
larger values.

Icon Sets
• Icon Sets in Excel are ready-
to-use formatting options
that add various icons to
cells, such as arrows, shapes,
check marks, flags, rating
stars, etc. to visually show
how cell values in a range
are compared to each other.

What is Excel Formula?
•In Microsoft Excel, a formula is an expression
that operates on values in a range of cells.
•Excel formulas enable you to perform
calculations such as addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division.

Function
•The two words, “formulas” and “functions”
are sometimes interchangeable.
•They are closely related, but yet different.
•A formula begins with an equal sign.
Meanwhile, functions are used to perform
complex calculations that cannot be done
manually.

•Formula: =A2*B2
•Functions: =PRODUCT(A2,B2)
•Excel formulas and functions help you perform
your tasks efficiently, and it’s time-saving.

Excel Formulas and Functions
1. SUM
The SUM() function, as the name suggests,
gives the total of the selected range of cell
values. It performs the mathematical operation
which is addition.
=SUM(number 1, [number 2],…)

2. AVERAGE
The AVERAGE() function focuses on calculating
the average of the selected range of cell values.
=AVERAGE(number 1, [number 2],…)

3. COUNT
The function COUNT() counts the total number
of cells in a range that contains a number. It
does not include the cell, which is blank, and
the ones that hold data in any other format
apart from numeric.
=COUNT(value 1, [value 2],…)

4. COUNTA
The COUNTA() function is a premade function
in Excel, which counts cells in a range that has
values, both numbers and letters.
=COUNTA(value 1, [value 2],…)

5. COUNTBLANK
The COUNTBLANK() function is a premade
function in Excel, which counts blank cells in a
range.
=COUNTBLANK(range)

6. SUBTOTAL
The SUBTOTAL() function returns the subtotal in
a database. Depending on what you want to
select either Average, Count, Sum, Min, Max,
and others.
=SUBTOTAL(function_num,ref1,[ref2],…)
=SUBTOTAL(1,A2:A4)

7. MODULUS
The MOD() function works on returning the
remainder when a particular number is divided
by a divisor.
=MOD(number,divisor)
=MOD(A2,3)

8. POWER
The function POWER() returns the result of a
number raised to a certain power.
=POWER(number,power)
=POWER(A2,3)

9. CEILING
The CEILING() function rounds a number up to
its nearest multiple significance.
=CEILING(number,significance)

10. FLOOR
Contrary to the Ceiling function, the floor
function rounds a number down to the nearest
multiple of significance.
=FLOOR(number,significance)

11. CONCATENATE
This function merges or joins several text
strings into one text string.
=CONCATENATE(text1, [text2],…)

12. LEN
The function LEN() returns the total number of
characters in a string. So, it will count the
overall characters, including spaces and special
characters.
=CONCATENATE(text1, [text2],…)

Merge and Center
•Combine and center the contents of the
selected cells in a new larger cell
•This is a great way to create labels that spans
multiple columns.

Merge Across
•Merge selected cells in the same row into one
larger cell.

Merge Cell
•Merge the selected cells into one cell.

Split Cells
Data > Data Tools > Text to Columns
•Split a single column of text into multiple
columns.
•You can choose how to split it up: fixed width
or split at each comma, period, or other
character.

Microsoft Excel Essentials: A Beginner's Guide

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