What is Excel?

Codenamed Odyssey, Excel is a software program from Microsoft that is part of the Microsoft Office suite of software
programs. Developed by Microsoft and first released on September 30, 1985, Excel is capable of creating and editing
spreadsheets that are saved with a .xls or .xlsx file extension. General uses of Excel include cell-based calculation, pivot
tables, and various graphing tools. For instance, with an Excel spreadsheet, you could create a monthly budget, track
business expenses, or sort and organize large amounts of data.

Unlike a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, the Excel documents consist of columns and rows of data, made up of
individual cells. Each of these cells can contain either text or numerical values that can be calculated using formulas.

Excel overview

Below is an example of Microsoft Excel with each of its major sections highlighted. See the formula bar, cell, column, row,
or sheet tab links for further information about each of these sections.

Uses of excel in accounting

Microsoft Office Excel was designed to support accounting functions such as budgeting, preparing financial statements
and creating balance sheets. It comes with basic spreadsheet functionality and many functions for performing complex
mathematical calculations. It also supports many add-ons for activities such as modeling and financial forecasting, and
seamlessly integrates with external data to allow you to import and export banking information and financial data to and
from other accounting software platforms.

Budgeting and Statements

Microsoft Office Excel ships with templates for creating budgets, cash-flow statements and profit-and-loss statements,
which are some of the most basic documents used in accounting. In addition, you can download more complex
budgeting and statement templates from the Office website, or purchase specialized templates from third-party vendors
and install these in the application. If you need to create complex or custom budgets or financial statements, you can
either customize an existing template and re-use its elements, or create one from scratch using the functionality built
into Excel.

Spreadsheets

Performing line calculations is a basic accounting task, and Excel spreadsheets are designed to contain data in a tabular
format that supports both in-line and summation calculations, replacing the need for ticker tape and special accounting
calculators. The data in the spreadsheet is reusable and storable, making Excel more flexible than an accounting
calculator for performing simple calculations and summations. Additionally, you can create charts and graphs from the
spreadsheet data, creating a media-rich user experience and different views of the same data. You can also use add-ons
to mine the data and create models and financial forecasts.

External Data

You can import data from many different data sources into Excel. This is especially useful for accounting as you can pull
sales data, banking data and invoices from many sources into one central workbook to support your accounting
activities. The data can be stored in different databases and file formats prior to importing, allowing you to access data
from many different areas of your business without having to do additional data entry.

Integration
Excel integrates with many popular accounting software applications. For example, you can use the wizards that ship
with your preferred accounting software package to map Excel spreadsheets to your accounting data so you can perform
push and pull data operations from both Excel and your accounting package on demand.

Microsoft Excel shortcut keys

Below is a listing of all the major shortcut keys usable in Microsoft Excel. See the computer shortcuts page if you are
looking for shortcut keys used in other programs.

Shortcut Description Ctrl+D Fill down. Fills the cell beneath with the
contents of the selected cell. To fill more than one cell,
F2 Edit the selected cell. select the source cell and press Ctrl+Shift+Down to
F3 After a name has been created, F3 will paste select multiple cells. Then press Ctrl+D to fill them with
names. the contents of the original cell.

F4 Repeat last action. For example, if you changed
the color of text in another cell, pressing F4 will change
the text in cell to the same color.
F5 Go to a specific cell. For example, C6.
Ctrl+R Fill right. Fills the cell to the right with the
contents of the selected cell. To fill more than one cell,
select the source cell and press Ctrl+Shift+Right to select
multiple cells. Then press Ctrl+R to fill them with the
contents of the original cell.

F7 Spell check selected text or document. Ctrl+1 Change the format of selected cells.

F11 Create chart from selected data. Ctrl+5 Strikethrough highlighted selection.

Ctrl+Shift+; Enter the current time. Ctrl+P Bring up the print dialog box to begin the
printing process.
Ctrl+; Enter the current date.
Ctrl+Z Undo last action.
Alt+Shift+F1 Insert New Worksheet.
Ctrl+F3 Open Excel Name Manager.
Alt+Enter While typing text in a cell, pressing
Alt+Enter will move to the next line, allowing for Ctrl+F9 Minimize current window.
multiple lines of text in one cell.
Ctrl+F10 Maximize currently selected window.
Shift+F3 Open the Excel formula window.
Ctrl+F6 Switch between open workbooks or windows.
Shift+F5 Bring up search box.
Ctrl+Page up Move between work sheets in the same
Ctrl+1 Open the Format Cells window. document.

Ctrl+A Select all contents of the worksheet. Ctrl+Page down Move between work sheets in the same
document.
Ctrl+B Bold highlighted selection.
Ctrl+Tab Move between Two or more open Excel
Ctrl+I Italic highlighted selection.
files.
Ctrl+K Insert link.
Alt+= Create a formula to sum all of the above cells.
Ctrl+S Save the open worksheet.
Ctrl+' Insert the value of the above cell into the cell
Ctrl+U Underline highlighted selection. currently selected.

Ctrl+Shift+1 Format number in comma format.

Ctrl+Shift+4 Format number in currency format. Ctrl+Arrow key Move to next section of text.

Ctrl+Shift+3 Format number in date format. Ctrl+Space Select entire column.

Ctrl+Shift+5 Format number in percentage format. Shift+Space Select entire row.

Ctrl+Shift+6 Format number in scientific format. Ctrl+- Delete the selected column or row.

Ctrl+Shift+2 Format number in time format. Ctrl+Shift+= Insert a new column or row.

Ctrl+Home Move to cell A1.

Ctrl+~ Switch between showing Excel formulas or their values in cells.

Number Formatting

If a built-in number format does not meet your needs, you can create a new number format that is based on an existing
number format and add it to the list of custom number formats. For example, if you're creating a spreadsheet that
contains customer information, you can create a number format for telephone numbers. You can apply the custom
number format to a string of numbers in a cell to format them as a telephone number.

IMPORTANT: Custom number formats affect only the way a number is displayed and do not affect the underlying value of
the number. Custom number formats are stored in the active workbook and are not available to new workbooks that you
open.