Excel Tutorials

Excel is an extremely powerful program developed by MicroSoft as a spreadsheet program to assist in "crunching numbers." The features that have been added to Excel over the different years and improvements in the different versions have made it even more robust than just a 'number-cruncher' although it still does that very well. There are several different ways of accomplishing the same result in Excel. We will not explore all of the different ways (as if we could really know all) to accomplish a task. There may be several different ways which are not explored here in these tutorials-ways that are more efficient than the ones presented! Please share your ideas if you know better ways than the 'tricks' we chose to present. The basic Excel topics may be explored in any format. We suggest that you generally follow the order that the topics are presented in this outline.

CONTENTS
1. Navigation on sheet Arrow keys and Mouse clicks Tab key CNTL-Home and End and Page Up and Page Down 2. Size adjustments to Rows and Columns * Column Width & Row Height * Formatting a collection of rows or columns 3. Formatting Cell Contents * Text Alignment and Number Alignment Setting Toolbars Formatting a block of cells Indent Fonts & Sizes Bold, Underline, Italics Font Color & Cell Color 4. Numbers and Formatting * Display of place value in a cell Percentage Currency Fraction Date & Time 5. Arithmetic 6. Forms
* Merge Cells Background Colors in Cells * Borders * Vertical Display * Text Wrap and Vertical Alignment Operations Order of Operation Formulas Sum Function * Average Function (Important for inserting other functions!) Arithmetic with time

7. Useful Organizational Features Print Area vs. Work Area Hyperlinks Inserting and Deleting rows or columns * Shifting two columns in a spreadsheet Transposing rows and columns Sheets in the Book Cell Comments * Split Screen with Freeze section

8. Charts and Graphs * Bar Graph Line Graph Circle Graph 9. Efficiency in building spreadsheets * Copy Fill Copy Copy/Paste Copy Auto Serial Copy between two or more spreadsheets Toggle view of formulas and functions 10. Drawing in Excel
Drawing Toolbar and Line Tool Arrow Tool Insert Clipart/Image File Rectangles and Ovals AutoShapes Arrange order of objects

11. Use of Some Special Functions If Function Text Count Random Number Math & Trig Statistical Pivot Table (Needed) 12. Database Features * Filters * Sorting Find Mail Merge - Labels 13. Printing in Excel
Setting Gridlines, Margins, Orientation Inserting/Deleting Page breaks Print Preview * Setting/Removing Print Area Printing Column Headings in a Report

Navigation in Excel
In order to do anything in Excel, you must first know how to move around. Let's examine some of the fundamental features of all Excel documents.

When you first open a brand new Excel document, you will see the expected Main Menu at the top of the screen. Most Windows applications give you a set of drop-down menu items letting you make choices, take actions, edit those actions. Fortunately, many of the actions you are already familiar with are found in Excel. Many of these features are found in the exact same place, have the same name, and perform identically to what you might expect from another program (ie. save, print, copy, etc.) You should plan to transfer much of what you already know from other applications like word processing into Excel.

The working part of the document contains a grid of small rectangles called cells. The layout of the cells is also rectangular in rows and columns. The columns of cells have a column heading using the letters A, B, C, ... and the rows are numbered 1, 2, 3, ...

One of the easiest ways to move around between the different cells is to use the keyboard arrow keys. The single cell that is highlighted with the 'picture frame' is something like the cursor in word processing. Anything you type will begin appearing in the highlighted cell. One way to control the location of the active cell is to press the arrow keys. As you might expect, the direction of the next highlighted cell corresponds to the choice of arrow key. (The up-arrow key moves the highlighted cell up one cell in the spreadsheet.)

Each cell of the spreadsheet is located on some row and some column. In this example, the highlighted cell is located in Column B and located on Row 3. Excel gives the user a visual clue of the active cell in the corner above the row numbers and slightly above the A-column. The combination of column and row is the cell address. A cell labeled J23 would be in column J on row 23. It is customary to label the cell address by naming the column first and then the row. If you are the curious type, you might want to depress your right-arrow key and explore the column headings. If you hold the key down and keep it down, the screen will jump and the column headings will quickly pass Z. The folks at Excel decided that A-Z might not be enough columns and continued labeling the columns after Z with AA, AB, AC, ... You might wonder about the size of the spreadsheet. That is, how many rows and how many columns are available? As you can see from these two pictures, the number of columns is quite large as is the number of row!

Last Column

Last Row

We don't think you need any help discovering still another way to move the highlighted cell. If you have accidentally clicked your mouse in a cell, you noticed that the clicked cell is now hightlighted. Depending on the location of the current hightlighted cell, it might be much quicker to point and click the mouse rather than hit the up-arrow three times and the right arrow four times. We find moving around the window over the spreadsheet to be fairly easy with the arrow keys or clicking the mouse. sometimes you may want to jump a "long distance" from the current highlighted cell. There are ways other than using the arrow keys or the scroll bars on the sides of the Excel window. Check those out back at the Main Menu.

Navigation with the Tab Keys

You may move left and right on a single row using the tab keys. Pressing the Tab key once will move you one cell to the right.

Original positon

Tab once

Tab again

You may move left one cell by depressing the Shift key and the Tab key at the same time. This action is often called a "Shift-Tab" action.

Original Position

ShiftTab once

ShiftTab again

A logical question might be asked at this point.... "How is this different from using the left and right arrow keys?" A great question! ...It isn't any different as far as the result. Some touch typing users find reaching for the tab key is quicker than reaching for the arrow keys. (We are not sure why, we only know the tab and shifttab keys work and are only speculating why Excel offers two similar features.)

Control Home and Control End

Some spreadsheet users will have projects that extend far beyond the boundaries of the Excel window. They have to scroll to the right or down long distances. The side scrollbars offer one easy way to move the Excel window in the spreadsheet. If the user's mouse skills are not strong, Excel offers a keyboard trick to move around quickly too. You don't have to have weak mouse skills to enjoy the feature! The cell at A1 is considered the "home" position for the window. Regardless of where the Excel window is located in the spreadsheet, the depression of the Control Key and the Home key will instantly move the window where A1 is in the top left corner.

This image represents the top corner of the Excel window the user is using at the moment.

This image represents the top corner of the Excel window AFTERpressing the CTRL+Home keys. Notice the hightlighted cell becomesA1. (Looks like John could study a little more!) There is another Control + key that also moves the window to a new location in the spreadsheet. The Control + End will move the Excel window to display the cell that is on the right-most column and the lowest row. Some people might call this the "last" cell. As an aside, you should experiment with the Page Up and Page Down keys to see what happens. The results of all of these CNTL keys should match your intuition of the action. Note, these actions are conceptually similar to many word processing programs.

2. Size adjustments to Rows and Columns

* Column Width & Row Height * Formatting a collection of rows or columns

Adjusting the Width of Columns and Height of Rows

The newly opened Excel document will display cells in rows and columns. The size of the cells is uniform. That is, the width of each of the cells is identical. The same is true of the heights of the cells. For many, many projects, the default setting is sufficient. For others, it needs to be adjusted. Let's take a look at the adjustment of the cell dimensions using only the mouse. The Problem: When you enter contents into a cell and the size font or the quantity of keystrokes cause the cell data to "overflow" the width of the column

In this example, the heading "My Company's Income" in cell B2 takes up more space than is available for the width of column B. The "extra" typing spills over into the vacant adjacent cell. There will be a conflict with the contents of cell C2! In order to "fix" the problem, you can follow along with these steps.

Move your cursor to the vertical line between the B and C. When the mouse is successfully over the vertical line, the cursor will turn into a "two-headed" arrow. Click and drag the cursor in the direction you want the column width adjusted. (right).

The width of column B is adjusted to "fit" the width of the contents of the cell. Of note is the fact that the cell B2 is not the only cell changed. All of the cells in column B are adjusted by whatever distance you drug the vertical bar. You don't make a single cell wider or narrower, you adjust the entire column. Having completed the section on adjusting the column width, you should have a good guess on how to increase or decrease the height of the cells on a row. We think a single picture will suffice to describe what you do.

Before you ask why you would want to change the height of a row, note we are only showing the process. When you want/need to make a change, you will know how!

Formatting Multiple Rows or Columns

If you have the need to format several rows or several columns the exact same way, it can be tedious to make the exact same adjustments on each row or column. Excel offers a better way. Reach back to your Word Processing days for the idea. If you wanted to change the font for every word in a paragraph, you first "Selected" the paragraph and then you changed the font. It would have been silly to select each letter one at a time and change the font. Similarly, if you want to format several rows or columns exactly the same, you should select the "target" and apply the format. The question to answer is..."How do I select more than one row or column at a time?" Suppose you wish to widen the columns D, E, and F the exact same amount. You could make adjustments in each column one at a time. This would be tedious and perhaps even difficult. If you carefully move your mouse over the column heading D, the mouse changes to a down arrow. If you click, you select all of the cells in column D. Now if keep the mouse pointer over and Column E.

you button depressed and drag the mouse Column E, you will select both Column D If you continue to depress the mouse button and drag the pointer over Column F, you will selectColumns D, E, and F. With all three columns selected, your "target" is selected. If you now adjust the column width of any oneof these columns, the adjustment will be applied to all columns that were selected!

Note that the columns are all the same width. You know this is true because the width adjustment made to one column will be applied to each of the columns in your target selection group. Much less work for you! Similarly, if you want to apply a format to all of the cells in a single row, you would click on the number of the row.

If that same format is needed on several other rows, you would drag the mouse up or down from the initially selected row to select multiple rows. Whatever format feature that is selected will be applied to all of the cells in the selected rows.

3. Formatting Cell Contents

* Text Alignment and Number Alignment Setting Toolbars Formatting a block of cells Indent Fonts & Sizes Bold, Underline, Italics Font Color & Cell Color

Alignment of Text
When you type some text in an Excel cell and press the enter key, the text you entered is displayed aligned to the left. This is the default alignment.

Note the letters "jim" are displayed in the cell on the left side. This may or may not be the alignment you prefer. You may direct Excel to display your text in one of three alignments: left, center, or right. While there are several ways to adjust the text alignment in cells, we find the alignment buttons to be the easiest (one click!) to use.

If you hover your mouse over the three alignment buttons, a text box will pop up displaying the action taken if the button is clicked. We are sure you can determine the other two alignments from this example. A word of caution here.....you must FIRST select the cell(s) you wish to have their alignment changed and then click on the correct alignment button. Numbers are different from text as far as Excel is concerned. Numbers will be aligned right. However, you can change the alignment of cells with numbers using the same alignment buttons. Consider this example:

The numbers in Column D and Column G were entered. The numbers in Column G were aligned in the Center. Note the vertical display of the digits in Column G...the place value of the one's and ten's place are not arranged directly over each other. Since people are used to viewing numbers in a column with the place values lined up over each

other, Excel defaults to the right alignment to preserve the expected alignment of numbers in a column. Toolbars Excel provides many, many shortcuts for its users. One of the nicest shortcuts is the set of action buttons that abound around your document. These easy to see and reach buttons let you click once on a single screen object and accomplish the same thing you could by clicking on a Menu title, dragging down to select something from a drop-down menu, and perhaps even several submenus below the initial menu. (We rate these helpful items right up there with morning coffee!) Excel groups these action button on what is called toolbars. The toolbars holding buttons have been grouped into categories of similar buttons. That is, a single toolbar might hold all of the drawing buttons. You can control which of these toolbars is visible at any time. Follow along as you explore the toolbar selection process. The toolbars are selected by clicking on View from the main Menu. Toolbars is one of the options. Highligh Toolbars and you will see the various sets of toolbars available in Excel. Note some of the toolbars have checkmarks besides their names. The checkmark means the toolbar is displayed on the Excel document. You can hide a toolbar and bring out others by clicking on the name of the toolbar. We strongly recommend you keep Standard and Formatting out. We ususally keep the Drawing toolbar out too. Each toolbar you choose to bring out "pinches" the available space for your document. We advise bring out the most commonly used buttons and keeping a larger document. You can always bring out a particular set of buttons on a toolbar when your current project would be helped by using a particular toolbar.

The Standard Toolbar is positioned on top of the Format Toolbar.

The Drawing Toolbar During the course of each of the tutorials on this website, we will use Excel with these Toolbars out.

Format a Block of Cells It is somewhat rare to need to format all of the cells in a row or column in a particular way. The more common need is to format a portion of a row or column. You may need to format a collection or block of cells...say a 5 x 6 block of cells. Just as in the discussion about selecting the target row or column, you should first select the target block of cells. This is accomplished by visualizing the block as a rectangle. Click the mouse in one corner of the "rectangle" or block and drag to the diagonally opposite corner. You may find it easier to drag down and across rather than make a diagonal swipe with the mouse.

This example shows an initial click in the top corner and two dragging paths (red and black) to the bottom right corner. Either method will select the 7 x 3block of cells.

Once the target block is selected, you may apply the particular format feature. All cells in the selected block will be formated with the same format feature. This could be a cell alignment feature, a cell background color feature, a particular place value for numbers feature, etc. You can format each of the cells one at a time, but if each of the cells should be formatted identically, why not select the block first?

Indent

The concept of indenting is quite common in writing. Whatever the left margin happens to be, the indented text begins to be displayed several blank spaces from the margin edge. This serves to "set apart" this beginning point from the rest of the text that will be aligned at the margin. (The first word of this paragraph is "indented" a few spaces.) In an Excel cell (bet you can't say that 5 times quickly!), you also may have the need to indent. Let's take a look at what an indent will look like in Excel.

In this example, the cells are displayed with normal (no indent), one indent, and two indents. Depending on the width of the column, you could have more than two indents. Also note the "size" of the indent depends on the font size you have chosen for that cell. Excel provides two

buttons (Increase and Decrease) for adding/removing indents. If you hover your mouse over the buttons you will quickly identify which button is which.

One very good question should be asked here..."When would I ever need that feature?" We haven't a good answer because the need depends on your Excel project. Perhaps this example will give you some ideas where you might use indents. Consider what spacing you might want if you decided to put an outline (I, II, III, ... with A, B, C, and 1, 2, 3, ..) in an Excel project. You might not want to use different columns to display the spacing requirements for your outline. By proper use of the indent feature, you could have All of your text in a single column. Fonts and Sizes in Excel If you have ever set your font or font size in word processing, you are already equipped to change the font and size in Excel. First you would select the target cell(s) and then pick the font. The actual list of fonts you have at your disposal depend on which fonts are installed on your computer. Just as in other programs that let you select Fonts, Excel provides a font field and a down arrow beside that field. If you click on the down arrow, you will see the list of fonts. Scroll down the list to find the font of your choice.

The size of the font is selected is a similar manner. Next to the font field is located the size field. Click on the down arrow and select the size you need for the cell(s) selected.

A word of caution about selecting fonts. The default font (from the factory) is Arial. This font is commonly installed on most computers. Should you decide to change the font to a "special" font called "SuperFont #5" you have installed on your computer, you make the change as described. However, if you plan to distribute electronically your Excel project, the people who try to open your project won't see the text in "SuperFont #5" because they don't have your custom font installed on their computers! If you plan to distribute your Excel project, try to stick to fonts that are common and all who view your project will see it just as you do on your computer. Bold, Underline, Italics Excel gives you the opportunity to make some characters stand out from others with the familiar "styles" of Bold, Underline, and Italics. The process for converting text to one or more of these styles is to select the cell(s) and click on the appropriate button. The style buttons function identical to many Word Processing programs. The example below should give you an idea of the visual effect that might be achieved with one of these styles. (There will be some visual differences depending on the font and size you are using in how the styles are displayed.)

Excel provides three buttons to make the style change easy to reach. Once a style has been applied, you can click on the cell with the style and click on the appropriate style button to remove the style formatting.Hover your mouse over the different style buttons to get a reminder of which is which.

Note that you can apply combinations of styles. That is, you can have bold text that is also underlined. An underlined word also may be viewed in italics.

4. Numbers and Formatting

* Display of place value in a cell Percentage Currency Fraction Date & Time

Place Value
When you are dealing with numbers, you need to make a distinction between the value Excel holds in a cell and the value Excel displays. They could be different. Let's take a look at how Excel lets you have control over how many digits to display. First you select the cell containing a number. Then you select Format from the Menu at the top and indicate that you want to format Cells. (Note that all versions of Excel will not give you this exact set of choices under Format. However, all will give you the choice of Cells to format!)

When you make this selection, a panel of choices will appear letting you have many different cell formatting choices. Note the different "Tabs" across the top. We will choose theNumber tab if it is not selected.

Typically, General will be highlighted in the Category window. We want to select the category called Number. When we do, we will see a panel like this example. Note the circled Decimal Places field. You may enter a value there or use the up and down arrow keys to adjust the display to the number of decimal places you wish to have Excel display in the cell(s) selected.

While you are here, also notice the Use 1000 Separator box is blank. If you check it, you will see a comma separating the digits in a long number.

Look at the results of two different cell formats. It should be clear that the value is the cell is 4.563456 and the display in the cell is different! Someone has told Excel to only display 4-decimal places. This could produce interesting results if this cell is used in a formula. Excel will use the cell contents not the cell display!!! This example shows the effect of checking the 1000 comma separator in the Format panel. Generally, the use of the comma makes the reading of the number easier even though it does require a slightly wider column to display the comma.

There are other formats for numbers. You should investigate some of the other choices. Percentage Excel can format a number as a decimal. This means the decimal .3333333 could be displayed as 33%. Let's see how to make it happen. Let's see if we can follow the example to produce the following results.

Original Number .342

Formatted as a Percent 34.20%

First we enter the number in a cell. Then with the number selected, we choose Format + Cells. This will bring up the Formatting Choices. From this panel we select Percentages from the format Categories. Choose the number of decimal places you wish to display after the decimal. Note the Sample shows you what the display will look like with your selection. As a mental exercise, you might think what value you would use in the decimal places field to display exactly 34%. (Comment: Excel will round up and if you set the Decimal places field to 0. That is .345 will be displayed as 35% rather than 34%)

Currency
The term currency might be a synonym for the $ and 2-decimal places. Much of the arithmetic found in spreadsheets concerns money and Excel developers like to be able to display their work with the proper format. The process for formating a number as money starts out like the other number formats. You begin by selecting Format + Cells.

When the Format Panel options appears, you would select Number and then Currency. Note the default settings give you the 2 Decimal places and the $ symbol. While you are viewing this panel, note there are some other settings you could do to format the number(s) selected from the financial perspective.

The results of selecting the format of Currency will look like the following example: Before Formatting 12.4 3.233 4.238 23 After Formatting $12.40 $3.23 $4.24 $23.00

Fractions
Although the number of times we find a need to display a number as a fraction is small, we do note that Excel let's us do it every time. The process is quite simple. You select a cell or cells and then select Format + Cells + Fraction from the Format Numbers panel.

Below is a table of different numbers formatted according to the different Types of Fraction formats.

As you can see, the halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, tenths, and hundredths will perform a round off. Probably you will use the two-digits or three-digits selection the most.

Time
Time is handled in a numerical way with Excel. Fortunately, you can generally produce the results you wish without having to delve too deep in mathematics. Time will mean both the clock time as well as the calendar time. Perhaps the easiest way to look at time is to examine some options. If you examine your choices, you can probably find a suitable date format for any spreadsheet. First select the cell(s) you wish to format as dates (or times). The n choose Format + Cells from the Menu.

Click on the Number tab and scroll down until you highlight Date.

When you do, the different choices for formatting dates will appear on the right panel. You will select the proper format and click on OK to apply your choice.

You might notice there is a scroll bar for the different types. This indicates there are still more choices. The remainder of the choices are displayed here.

We don't find the like between the type selected and what Excel actually displays will always match our choice of cell entry. A short table is provided which shows what happens when you enter a single date different ways and a few of the different formats are applied to that data entry.

The yellow strip represents some of the choices of date formats. The left column represents several ways to enter April 5. The results are displayed in the table contents. Note what happens if you should enter the year first as is shown in the bottom two rows. Comment: if you should enter 4/5 in a cell planning this entry to be a division problem, Excel will anticipate this is your way of entering a date and display the results using a date format of 5-Apr. The trick is to "fool"Excel into thinking the entry is a text. You should first enter an apostrophe and then 4/5 as in '4/5. Excel says this must be text and will display the 4/5 without the apostrophe showing. This apostrophe "trick" works for Time also.

Formatting cells as time is very similar to formatting cells as dates. First select the cell(s) you wish to format. Then select Format + Cells from the Menu. Click on the Number Tab.to bring up your choices of categories.

When you slide your mouse down to Time and select, you will see the time format Types that are available to you. Note the scroll bar indicating even more choices.

As with the Date format above, an example might help you see which of the date formats would be most useful. Only a few of the total options are presented. The yellow strip represents three choices for formatting. The left column represents several ways to enter 9 O' Clock. The contents of the table show what happens.

Note that 9 and 0900 do not respond well as data for time. The use of the colon gave Excel sufficient information to use the time-formatted cells. Perhaps you can find a different time format which will "like" 0900 as a valid time entry...these three didn't!

5. Arithmetic
Operations Order of Operation Formulas Sum Function * Average Function (Important for inserting other functions!) Arithmetic with time

Operations
The mathematicians we know tend to classify operations into two types: binary and unary. Binary operations require two numbers. We are familiar with such examples as 2 + 4. This has two numbers and a single operation. The unary operations are the types of operations where a number does something to itself. An example might be the square root of 4 or 3 raised to the second power. Most of the time we use the "binary" type operation and these operations are so common in their use, we call them the "four basic operations."

A quick review of some basic facts is in order. Excel allows you to direct the four basic operations of arithmetic to happen on numbers. These operations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The standard symbols you might expect for addition and subtraction (+ and ) are used to indicate the operation. Multiplication and division are slightly different than what you might use with pencil and paper or typewriters.

The asterisk ( * ) is used to indicate multiplication. That is, the "X" in the familiar 2 X 3 is replaced with 2 * 3. The asterisk is the ONLY symbol Excel will recognize as multiplication. It is common convention to replace the X in the expression 3 X (A + 5) and use 3(A + 5). It is "understood" that the positioning of the 3 up against the left parenthesis means to multiply....but not to Excel. You would have to enter 3*(A + 5) to get Excel to understand multiplication is indicated.

We have several ways of indicating division. Each of the four samples represents division with a different symbol.

3
7 divided by 12

7
3 divided by 7 15 divided by 3

3 divided by 7

Comments:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Excel, like other computer programs, requires operations to be entered on a single line. This would eliminate the first choice. The second choice is eliminated because you have no keyboard symbol. Long time ago, you could type on a typewriter a colon (: )and backspace and type a dash ( - ). Today, with computer keyboards, the backspace key will erase the colon! The third choice contains all that is necessary for entry of division from the keyboard of a computer. The "slash" key works This will be the accepted symbol for division by Excel. The fourth choice fails for lack of a keyboard symbol for division.

Examine the two different slash keys. There is the / (forward) and \ (back) slash keys. Excel recognizes only the / or forward-slash key as division. Excel will understand 5/6 but not 5\6.

Finally, Excel requires some help in making a distinction between the statement of the arithmetic problem and the command to compute the results of the problem. That is, if you enter 1/2 in a cell, should the display be .5 (the results) or should the display be 1/2 (the problem)? The folks at Excel came up with a code which lets you determine whether you wish to display the problem or the solution. When you wish Excel to actually calculate the results, you precede the problem with anequals sign. Problem You Type Result

12/36 6/8 9/2

=12/36 =6/8 =9/2

.333333 .75 4.5

Since square roots and powers were mentioned, let's take a quick visit to these type operations. The "trick" is to notice the carat or "up" key on the keyboard. It is the Shift+6 on the computer keyboard. To indicate 2 raised to the third power, you would enter =2^3 and Excel would calculate this exponent and display 8. To indicate 3 raised to the fourth power, you would enter =3^4 and Excel would calculate this exponent and display 81.

The square root process is a variation on this theme. You may or may not remember the relation between roots and exponents, but the square root of 2 is the same thing as 2 raised to the 1/2 power. To indicate the square root of 2, you would enter =2^.5 or =2^(1/2) and Excel would calculate this exponent and display 1.414213... depending on the number of decimals you set for that cell to display. For those who have completed some algebra lately, Excel will correctly understand operations like:

o o o o

=3^(2/3) as the cube root of 3 squared =5^ .123 as 5 raised to the exponent .123 =5^ 0 as 5 raised to the 0 power or 1 =3^ -1 as 3 raised to the negative 1 power or 1/3

Important Comment: If your normal life includes the use of powers and roots, this discussion probably wasn't necessary...you probably already knew this. If you get along fine in life without exponents, you will never be using exponents in your spreadsheets. Excel is "strong" enough to handle all the mathematics that you know and YOU can decide how much or how little you will use!

Order of Operation
Many, many years ago a "vote" was taken on how to evaluate an arithmetic expression like the following:

3+4X5
(A) You should start on the left and get 7 and multiply that by 5 to get 35 or (B) You should multiply 4 by 5 and get 20 and add 3 to 20 to get 23. Clearly, the expression should have only one solution, but which one??? If you use a $2 calculator, you will probably get 35 since most simple calculators perform arithmetic as it is entered. If you have a scientific calculator you will get 23. Scientific calculators know about the "vote"...they know about... The Order of Operations When an expression has more than one operation, the proper way to evaluate the solution is to multiply and divide first and then come back and add or subtract. If you should have a few exponents in the expression, they are computed before any multiplication or division. In the example above, you could use parentheses to indicate you wish the 3 and 4 added first. The problem would look like this:

(3 + 4) X 5
This would suggest the 3 and 4 should be added and then multiplied by 5.

Q: Why should you keep up with this? A: Since most people don't do much arithmetic, most people don't have a reason to remember the Order of Operations. The "cheap" response might be...If you don't know about the Order of Operations, you probably won't be entering many formulas into an Excel project! For those who might use a little more arithmetic than others, consider these two examples:

Problem 3+7 ----4 6-5 ----8+4

Comments:

Incorrect 3+7/4

Correct (3 + 7)/4

(6-5)/8 + 4

(6-5)/(8 + 4)

Excel would evaluate 3 + 7/4 using the Order of Operations. (Would you expect Excel to calculate like a $2 calculator?) That is, it will first compute 7/4 and add 3. The correct version directs Excel to add the 3 and 7 then to divide the sum by 4 Excel will evaluate (6-5)/8 first and get 1/8. Then 4 would be added. Wrong! The correct version would subtract 5 from 6, add 8 to 4, and then compute 1/12. Moral of the Story - Don't forget about The Order of Operation if you have a formula which has more than one operation....Excel won't forget!

Formulas in Excel
The use of formulas in spreadsheets has been credited with the success of moving microcomputers into the mainstream of modern computer usage. Formulas enabled financial officers to quickly and accurately compute the business "what if's.." that are important to decision-making even today. We will examine some ideas with formulas in Excel and you should be able to see some excellent opportunities to calculate both simple and complex models. First, we should point out that like other calculations in Excel, a formula is usually preceded with the = sign. That is, the expression =2 + 4 will cause Excel to calculate the sum of the two numbers and display the results as 6. Second, we should point out that the power of formulas comes in when we use placeholders rather than actual numbers in the formula. For example: =A3 + B3 directs Excel to add the contents of Cell A3 and the contents of B3 and put the sum in a different cell.

Look at this example where the formula in Cell A3 was actually entered in cell B3.

A 1 2 3 =B1 + B2

B 2 7 9

If someone enters 6 in Cell B1, the value of B3 is instantly calculated to display the sum of the current values of B1 and B2.

A 1 2 3 =B1 + B2

B 6 7 13

The person who entered 6 could be asking...."What happens to the total if this value was 6?" By setting up a formula in Cell B3 that directs Excel to add the cell contents rather than add two specific numbers, Excel lets you see the effects of changing values in a formula. Suppose the model were a little more complex. Assume a manager is wishing to give raises to the employees in the company. It might be nice to have a spreadsheet to see what happens to the salaries if the percent raise was 2%, 2.5%, or 3%. The manager could determine from the "bottom line" how much raise the company can afford to give.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 Enter Raise--> Names Bill Fred Joe Total Payroll

B .02 Current Salary $34,000 $29,000 $31,520 $94,520

C Formula Entered in C Results =B3*(1+B1) =B4*(1+B1) =B5*(1+B1) =SUM(C3:C5) $34,680.00 $29,580.00 $32,150.40 $96,410.40

D Difference

$1,890.40

The formulas would actually be entered in Column C. Each formula directs Excel to compute (in this case): 1.02 X Current Salary to get the new salary. If the manager decides the company could stand the extra $1,890 for raises, the percent raise might be checked at 2.5%. Just as fast as the Enter key is pressed, the results would show the new calculations.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 Enter Raise--> Names Bill Fred Joe Total Payroll

B .025 Current Salary $34,000 $29,000 $31,520 $94,520

C Formula Entered in C Results =B3*(1+B1) =B4*(1+B1) =B5*(1+B1) =SUM(C3:C5) $34,850.00 $29,725.00 $32,308.00 $96,883.00

D Difference

$2,363.00

Instantly, the manager would see that a 2.5% raise would cost $2,363.00 more in gross pay. Obviously different values could be tried until the budget was broken! While a real financial forecast spreadsheet would have more employees and need the benefits offered by the company included in the financial model, the "instant" results of changing the percent in a single cell would give specific numerical data for financial decision-making.

Depending on the situation, a formula may have both "placeholder" values and constants. If you know that a number in a formula will never change, it probably will be entered as a constant. If the number in a formula will depend on the current value of a cell in the spreadsheet, you will probably use the cell address. If your spreadsheet requires "lot's" of formulas, you will appreciate all of the things Excel has done for you. We will explore how to copy formulas with little or no effort in another tutorial. Hint with formulas: Some formulas can be quite complicated. It would be easy to type a single keystroke wrong. The keypunch error may not "crash" the formula. After you have entered all formulas in the spreadsheet, it is wise to "check" your work by entering into a cell a number that you know what the result should be when calculated with your formula(s). If you get the correct result with that number, you probably will get the correct result when you use the real value in that cell.

Sum Function in Excel

Excel provides a "quick" way to produce some popular calculations using a process called a function. The format of many of the functions is very similar to the SUM Function. If you understand what is happening on the most popular function, you are a long way towards building the necessary understanding for many, many of the Excel functions. We will build the "sweetness" of the function process over a formula to help you see the efficiency. In the future, you will decide which (formula or function) you will use. Without a doubt, adding numbers is the most frequently used arithmetic process on all numerical spreadsheets. Let's take a look at how we direct Excel to add.

A 1 2

B 12

3 4 5 6 Sum =

7 6

We would like to put the sum of the three numbers in the yellow cell. We do not want to add the numbers and enter the sum (25). We want to make Excel do the arithmetic! We could click in cell B6 and enter a formula to make Excel do the work:

=12 + 7 + 6
Important: The = is included in the formula to distinguish to Excel that the numbers that follow are to be calculated. If you leave off the =, Excel will just display the text characters 12 + 7 + 6 and not find the sum.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sum =

B 12 7 6 =12+7 +6

When you complete the formula you will press the Enter key and Excel will compute the value in Cell B6.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sum =

B 12 7 6 25

Now imagine you have several numbers to add. Suppose you had to find the sum of the following list: 23, 45, 56, 11, 45, 123, 4, 90, 24, 54, 94, 92, 22, 42, 58, 16, 9, and 5 Your formula would look like this:

=23 + 45 + 56 + 11 + 45 + 123 + 4 + 90 + 23 + 54 + 94 + 92 + 22 + 42 + 58 + 16 + 9 + 5 With so many numbers to enter, there is a probability you will make a keypunch error. Can you find the error in my formula? There is one. How would you know you had made an error? How would you check to see if you had entered the formula correctly? The checking would be extremely tedious if not impossible to certify correct. There has to be a better way. Thank you Excel for the SUM function!

A 1 2 3 4 5 6

B 12 7 6

Let's use this same example and see how it works for a short list of numbers. It will work the same for a long list!
First let's locate the cell addresses of the two end-points of the column of numbers. The 12 is in B2 and the 6 is in B4. We will direct Excel to find the sum of all numbers between the two endpoints by the function. First we click on the yellow cell (B6) and enter the function:

=SUM(B2:B4) The = says this is an expression to be calculated The SUM says this is the SUM function B2 is one endpoint of the column and B4 is the other The : indicates use all the numbers from B2 through B4
In this case, we have directed Excel to find the sum of the numbers in the range of cells from one endpoint to the other. The sum function is the same whether the list of numbers to be added is 2 or 200! Try to envision where the list of numbers would be located in the spreadsheet for each of these examples. 1) =SUM(B2:E2) 2) = SUM(C3:C6) When you have mentally produced an answer, scroll down to see the answer.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The "neat" thing about the sum function is that it works independent of the length of the string of numbers. All you have to do is put them in a row or column and apply the sum function. Another "neat" fact about the sum function is approximately 75% to 80% of all spreadsheets using any arithmetic use this function. Learn to use this function and you are almost finished!

As previously mentioned, the Sum function is quite popular. The folks who developed Excel thought you might get tired of typing the sum function and produced a shortcut they call AutoSum. We love shortcuts, so let's take a look at this one. The task is to get Excel to add this column of numbers without using a formula or having to type the sum function.

Note there is a button on the Toolbar that will help.

The summation sign or the Sigma sign is used by Excel to give you the AutoSum shortcut. You can view the name of the button by hovering your mouse over the button and the name will appear.

If you actually click the AutoSum button, you will see an outline of the numbers Excel predicts you are trying to find the sum. It is important that you look at the suggested range of numbers to see if you agree. Sometimes Excel will not guess correctly what numbers you want to include in the range. If you agree with the outlined range of numbers, simply press the Enter key and Excel will complete building the Sum function and perform the calculation.

We think you need to be able to enter the Sum function from the keyboard as well as enter using the AutoSum button. At some point in your work, you will have to edit the Sum function to correctly identify the range YOU want.

Average Function in Excel

If you haven't looked at the Sum function yet, we recommend you look at that process first. The Excel way of handling the average function is conceptually identical to the way the sum function is handled. Also, we use the Average function as the way to illustrate how to enter ANY function available in Excel. You might want to study this tutorial for purposes other than the Average function.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at the average function. First, the average function will compute the arithmetic mean. That is, it will sum the numbers in a range (horizontal or vertical) and divide by the number of numbers in the range. The actual function will take the form of: =AVERAGE(beginning cell : ending cell)

Beginning Ending c5 b6 D8 k5 b26 M8

Function =average(c5:k5) =average(b6:b26) =average(d8:m8)

Note that in each case, the function begins with the = and is followed by the name of the function. The left parenthesis is "pushed" tight against the last character in the function name. [ie. =average( and not =average ( ]

Also note the ending cell.

: is used to mean that Excel is to use all numbers from the beginning cell through the

One example of how the finished result might look is provided.

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Average

B 12 34 56 14 7

24.6 =average(b1:b5)

If the formula entered in cell C7 is entered in cell B7, the result will be the average of the numbers in the range from B1 to B5. Comment: The average function may be superior to the combination of the Sum function and a division. Suppose there are instances where there are missing numbers. Consider this example. (Note the missing value in Cell B3.)

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Average

B 12 34 14 7

=sum(b1:b5)/4 16.75 =average(b1:b5)

The two functions would result in the exact same result. If you have a long list of numbers with several blank cells in the list, you must correctly count the number of non-blank cells to determine the correct number to use in the division. Using the Sum function and counting requires accuracy in your counting process. The Average function just averages "whatever numbers" are in the list.

The Average function may not be one of the more popular statistical functions you will use. Consequently, you may forget whether the function begins =average or =avg or =avrg or any possible combinations of letters to match what Excel chooses to name its version of the average function. Excel offers an easy

path to insert the average function. This path is important because it illustrates how you may access ALL of the functions installed in your version of Excel. We will examine two very similar ways. Let's use the same problem. First you select the cell where the average should appear in your spreadsheet. In this case, that is Cell E9. If you remember the Average function format, you can type it in here. If not, you may use one of the two methods that follow to let Excel insert it for you.

Method 1 - Using the Toolbar Located on the Toolbar is a symbol of a function. You may hover your mouse over this button and see the tip: "Paste Function".

Method 2 - Using Insert from the Menu If you select Insert from the top menu and scroll down to Function, you will move the highlighted blue area to the correct choice. Note the function symbol to the left of the Function text in the drop-down box. It is identical to the function symbol on the Toolbar used in Method 1. Using either method to select the Paste Function option will bring up a "function wizard" which will let you be sure you have selected the correct function for your need.

The left window lets you select the type of function you wish to use. Once you select the correct category on the left, the functions in that category will appear in the right window. While you are here, notice the number of different categories of function. This might be a clue that there are many, many functions available through Excel. Using this Paste

Function process, you can access each and every one. Also,

Arithmetic with Time

We find very few people who need to do basic arithmetic with time. But those who do REALLY need to do arithmetic. Typically, this arithmetic consists of determining how much time has elapsed between two times or finding the sum of several times. Perhaps there is even an interest in determining the length of time between two dates. These may be esoteric needs to many, but Excel "stands tall" to help you do arithmetic with time if that is what you need. Let's build a problem where arithmetic with time could be somewhat tedious. Suppose you have people working for you that you pay by the hour. Officially, the work day is 8 hours, but some come late and some leave early. You might have a clocking system which stamps the time in and out. A typical person might have 8:15 AM and 4:55 PM. Ask yourself..."How fast could you determine the amount of time in hours and minutes this person worked?" Excel can handle this type of problem with ease. It is all in the cell formatting and planning how you enter data. In this example, the time in data and time out data are entered from the keyboard. The rest of the cells are already entered as formulas. Note the length of the "lunch hour". The "trick" is in formatting Cell C2 and C3 as time with "1:30 PM" as the formatting choice. The cells C5, C6, and C7 are formatted as "13:30:55". The two formulas are entered in Cell C5 and Cell C7. This individual worked for 7 hours and 47 minutes (or at least was 'at work' for that long!) If you change the constant time for work from 48 minutes to some other time, the calculations will correctly compute by subtracting out the lunch time.

6. Forms
* Merge Cells Background Colors in Cells * Borders * Vertical Display * Text Wrap and Vertical Alignment

Merge Cells There may be times when you wish you could erase the cell borders and not show the horizontal and vertical lines on part of the spreadsheet while still showing those same lines on the rest of the spreadsheet. Probably the reasons for needing to do this are more aesthetic than functional...but it's your spreadsheet and you want it to look the way you want. That's reason enough! Let's see one way to make it happen. An example of how you can appear to "erase" some cell borders is given here. In this example, the vertical borders are missing on row 1 and 2. The horizontal line between row 1 and row 2 is missing. There is a block in the middle where the horizontal and vertical lines are missing. Let's see how to make it happen.

First, you select a block of cells where you want the horizontal and vertical lines to disappear. (Click and drag) The selection could be cells on a single row or a single column. It just depends on where the lines should be "erased." Now you would select the Merge and Center button on the button panel. This will cause the spreadsheet to collapse all of the cells in the selected block into one cell. There are no cell borders inside a single cell, so the effect is to "erase" lines.

The results are shown below.

Note that Excel considers the resulting cell as Cell B3. Also note the "button tip" of Merge and Center. Once a block of cells are merged, you have to be able to put everything back like it was if you change your mind. The path to "un-merge" requires just a slight bit more effort than the single click used to merge, but not much more. First you would select the block of cells that have been merged. Then from the Menu, Select Format + Cells. This will bring up the Format Cells wizard that lets you format cells in any number of ways.

We will select the Alignment tab at the top if it is not already selected. This should return your "merged" cells to their former condition. You would uncheck this block and click on OK. At the bottom of the Alignment wizard you will see a checkmark beside the Merge cells block.

You may have noticed some other formatting options viewable from the Alignment tab. Great! Many of these features will be covered in some of the other formatting tutorials.

Background Color in Cells

You may have already looked at how to add background color in cells in an earlier tutorial. If not, the process will be repeated and several examples how how you might choose to use color in your spreadsheets will be explored. First, let's look at the process of filling a cell's background with color.

First you should select the cell(s) that you wish to fill in a background color. Then you should find the Fill Color button. It is the button with the "paint bucket" icon. The choice of buttons is given by selecting the downarrow to the right side of the Color Fill button. Note the No Fill selection is used when you wish to revert the background color to its former state. Once you select a color, the target group of cells will have have a background color of whichever color you selected. That's all there is to the process! The rest of the use of colored backgrounds will depend on your creativity and planning.

We provide some examples to "prime the pump" of your creativity. You could use a "border" around your project to set it apart from the actual spreadsheet work. Excel will support color printing if you have a color printer. If not, the colors will appear as different shades of gray.

Sample 1 You might wish to highlight in color selected parts of your spreadsheet such as a heading.

Sample 2 The use of color may be totally aesthetic or it could be functional in drawing the viewers attention to color-coded sections of your work. Unlock your creativity and see if the use of background colors enhance your forms.

Cell Borders
The spreadsheet developer has fairly strong control over the outline of each cell in the document. This begins with controlling the darkness of the lines and extends to the thickness, color, and style of the lines. Primarily the adjustment of cell borders advances the aesthetics of the document, but also may include some functionality by setting apart certain cells on the printed document as well as the screen document. Gridlines The borders of the cells of a spreadsheet document will always be viewable on the screen. However, the default setting is to NOT print the borders on paper. The choice of printing the gridlines must be activated. If you want the gridlines to be printed, you must change the default setting. This change is found in the Page Setup under File in the Menu.

The Page Setup wizard lets you make many adjustments to the document. The gridelines change is located on the Sheets Tab. You need to check the blank gridlines box to instruct Excel to print the cell borders. Clicking in this box is the way to cut on and off the printing of gridlines. When you are satisfied, you would click on OK.

When printing, Excel will print all borders of cells from the "top" of the document to the lowest cell containing data.

Hint: To get a blank page of gridlines, enter a "spacebar" character somewhere around cell H51 or I51. Depending on the margins you have set and the width of the columns, this will fill a page with a grid when you print. Border Panels Excel offers two different Border Panels for your use. The first contains ALL of the adjustments you can make and the second offers the more popular adjustments in a convenient place. First select a cell or block of cells that you want to change the border look. Then you select Format + Cells from the menu to display the Format Cells wizard shown here. Click on the Border tab to display your options. Note you can control

the style and color of your buttons from this Border Panel. The Presets allow you to select to darken the entire border, all of the internal borders in a block of cells selected, or to remove all border changes and restore the borders to their original condition. In this example, the Presets would indicate the selected cells have no border adjustments active and the original selection of cells contains no internal cells (probably a single cell was selected). You could click on the Outline button to darken the border on the selected cell. The following example shows the effect of selecting a block of cells and applying two different border techniques from the Presets of the Border Panel.

The top example shows the Outline button will darken the border of the block of cells that were selected. The bottom example shows what happens when both the Outline and the Inside buttons are selected. The Color panel gives you several options for displaying the border. Below are a couple of colored borders to give you an idea of the visual options available in Excel.

Example A shows a Red border around a block of cells (Outline). Example B shows a Blue block of cells (Outine and Inside). If you would like to have the border displayed in one of the different Styles offered, first click on the style and then select the border adjustment button of choice. Here are two examples to begin to give you some ideas.

Many people will not want all of these formatting features, but simply wish to darken one or more sides of the selected cells. The border buttons found on the Border Panel above are also found from the Button Panelabove the document on the Toolbar set of buttons.

These buttons work the same way regardless of how you access them. Let's find the border button on the document screen. The immediate access is found on the toolbar next to the paint bucket. The down-arrow next to the borders button gives you all of the choices. If you follow across the top row, the choices are to remove all border formats, darken the bottom of the cell, darken the left side of the cell, and darken the right side of the cell. The choices on the remaining two rows are fairly obvious. The button with the + will darken all borders in a selected block. The two remaining buttons give you different "thicknesses" of darkness around the border of the selected cells. The best way to get to know what these buttons will do to the cell border is to experiment. You will find different visual effects that you like and some that you probably don't like. Comment: One particular useful way to achieve a nice looking printed document is to turn off the printing of gridlines. Then, when you want a border to appear, use your border format buttons to put a dark outline around the cells containing data that needs to be setoff from the rest of the document as in column headings, titles, etc. Return | See a Movie of the Process Text Wrap and Vertical Alignment Return | See a Movie of the Process Often due to document layout issues or for personal taste, you may wish to have Excel display several lines of text in a single cell. This may be accomplished more than one way. We will explore two ways to get two lines of text in a single cell. Text Wrap The Excel developer probably has had experience with word processing programs when you type a line of text and reach the right margin of the document. If you continue typing, the additional text will "wrap" to the next line and you didn't have to do anyting to make it happen. This wrapping of text is the default setting in most word processing programs. Excel doesn't make this the default setting for a cell. You have to change the setting. As with many of the formatting features, the Text Wrap feature is found in the Format Cells wizard accessed by first selecting the cell(s) and then Format + Cells from the Menu. When the Format Cells wizard appears, select the Alignment tab and notice the Wrap Text block at the bottom. The default setting here is the Wrap Text is OFF. Place a check in the box and Text Wrap is turned on.

If you change your mind and want to take off the Wrap, return to this panel and click off the checkmark you previously placed. That's all there is to it! A couple of examples might let you see how you could use the wrapping of text in a single cell.

In this example, cell B5 contains the same information as cell B2, only the Wrap feature has been turned on. Also note the cell has the Center alignment selected. This could be useful in the column heading is narrow and you can still see all of the text in a horizontal layout. There could be some visual value in controlling the alignment of the text vertically. Let's examine how this could happen. When data is entered into a cell, the default vertical alignment is to display the data at the bottom.

Note in the Example A (on the left), the numbers are aligned to the right and text is aligned to the left. You can control the alignment by setting the horizontal alignment to center as in Example B. If you prefer, you can change the default vertical alignment and choose between top, middle, or bottom. Select the cell(s) whose vertical alignment you wish to change and select Format + Cells from the Menu. The Format Cells tab should be set to the Alignment choice. Notice you can set the horizontal alignment and the vertical alignment from this choice. If you click on the down-arrow beside the Vertical alignment choice, you will see the options. Drag the mouse to highlight your choice. When the alignment is set to your satisfaction, click on OK. This directs Excel to display the cell contents using your alignment choices.

This example shows numbers and text. Each of the three cells reflect horizontal centering and vertical alignment in the middle.

Even though vertical alignment is always "on" at some setting, you will not notice the alignment until the height of the cell row is sufficiently large enough to create space. Return | See a Movie of the Process

Vertical Alignment Return | See a Movie of the Process Let me set up this topic with a true story. My wife wanted to print some forms to distribute to her staff. The forms were a giant table with names of students down the left side and content headings for columns. The intent was to create a one-page checksheet that would let an X be placed in the cell beside the name of the student who completed the curriculum content of the column heading. The form she had in mind looked like this:

Name Jim John Joe Sam Pete Sue Fred

Content 1 x

Content 2 x

Content 3 x

Content 4 x

x x x x x

x x x x

The width of the columns need only be wide enough to place a mark. However, the column heading had to be wide enough to read the curriculum content. She was only able to get a few items on each page since a typical heading might be: "Multiplies two 2-digit Numbers" You can imagine how many columns she got on a page with columns wide enough to display this column heading! Follow along as I solved her problem.

This was the shape I found the Excel document. There was a place for names, and columns that were extremely wide for placing a checkmark. If you tried adjusting the column widths down, the column headingcouldn't be read.

Remembering that this was Excel, I selected all of the cells containing Curriculum Topics. The format feature should be applied to all selected cells.

With these cells selected, I chose Format + Cells from the Menu.

When the Format Cells wizard appeared, I selected the Alignment Tab. I quickly found the Orientation of the Text's red button.

I drug this button to the top. When this was completed, I clicked OK.

Instantly I viewed the selected cells with the text aligned vertically. Unfortunately, the widths of the columns needed adjusting.

I selected the columns containing the Curriculum Topics and adjusted the column widths to a reasonable size.

The staff had room to make a checkmark and each of the column headings could be easily read. There was plenty of room for more Curriculum Topics. Of course these would have to be added and aligned vertically. I was a hero!

(To extend the marriage warranty, husbands need to climb high mountains, swim deep rivers, or solve office problems ... thank you Excel... This trick added on at least 2 years!) In summary, remember that the cell contents may be displayed at any angle with the Text Orientation arrow in the Alignment Tab wizard. You should use this feature when you don't need wide columns, but you need many columns to appear on a single page. Experiment with dragging the orientation different levels to feel the control you actually have over the final results. Return | See a Movie of the Process

7. Useful Organizational Features Print Area vs. Work Area Hyperlinks Inserting and Deleting rows or columns * Shifting two columns in a spreadsheet Transposing rows and columns Sheets in the Book Cell Comments * Split Screen with Freeze section Print Area vs. Work Area Often when people start building a project in Excel, they just start typing in Cell A1. If you have even a slightly complicated project, we recommend you first step back from the keyboard and do some planning. One trick we often recommend is to conceptualize your spreadsheet project as two separate areas: A "work" area and a "print" area. This can have some nice, practical value if the printed report requirements do not include seeing how the values were obtained. Study this diagram to get the idea.

By placing the "corners" of the work area and the print area together, you could insert or delete rows or columns in one region and not disturb the layout of the other region. The next "trick" becomes the process of moving information from the work area to the print area. Again, this will require a little planning, but Excel is quite helpful. What would

happen in this sample spreadsheet in Cell D2? If you guessed that the contents of cell K55 would be displayed in Cell D2, you were correct!

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

C Sales Total

D =K55

This is the essence of the idea. You FIRST build the necessary document to be printed. What values are needed in this printed form will come from the work area. You will use the =Cell Address to copy what you need to the correct place in the printing area of your project. Easy to do and it may save you some headaches in trying to force the work area to also be used as a printed report form too! Return Hyperlinks You may already be familar with hyperlinking using the MicroSoft Office series of applications. The process in Excel is identical to the process in the other applications. In case you are not familiar, we will show the process here. You might want to try it out in the other applications as well! Hyperlinking in Excel is very similar to hyperlinking on the word. There is a "target" word or phrase. When you click on the target word or phrase, you will be transported to a new place. The new place could be a different window in the same document or it could be to load a new Excel document. The document launched does not have to be an Excel document. You could have Excel launch a document created by another application. That is, you could open a Word document from Excel. You could open a webpage (if your computer is connected to the Internet). In fact, you could use Excel as a "table of contents" to all the documents on your Hard Drive! The hyperlink process will create a "path" from where you are in Excel to the new place. Caution--If you share the document with someone else, the hyperlink may not work unless they have a document with the same name at the exact same directory level on their computer as you have on your computer when you create the hyperlink. With that word of caution, let's see how it works. Linking Within the Same Document Suppose you have several "projects" on a single large spreadsheet. When you first open the document you would like to instantly go to the start of the desired project.

In this example, you have started a "table of contents" for all the projects you have on this spreadsheet. Project 102 starts in Cell g3. You wish to create a hyperlink to Cell G3 from Cell B4 (start of project 102). You first position the mouse in the cell where the

Hyperlink is to begin--the cell containing the target text that will be clicked to start the hyperlink.

Then select Insert + Hyperlink from the Menu.

This will open the Hyperlink Wizard that lets you set the destination for the linking process.

In this case, we want to link within the same document. We should click on the Place in this Document on the left. Note the Wizard displays the text in the cell we are using as a target. (Taken from cell B2) In the Cell Reference we enter the Cell Address of where we want the hyperlink to jump. If we are satisfied, we click on OK. The resulting spreadsheet will display the result in the familiar underline as a link.

You might want to look back at the Hyperlink Wizard and study the other options for hyperlinking besides within the same document. Depending on what you want to do, the Wizard offers other options for you to consider. Return Inserting and Deleting Rows and Columns Absolutely nothing is more aggravating that completing a spreadsheet and needing to add a row to make room for a new entry in the nice list you just built. Fortunately, Excel

has made the adding and subtracting of rows and columns a snap. Let's take a look at how it's done and a few shortcuts to the process too. The place to go to add rows or columns is Insert from the Menu. The choices are obvious. Simply select row or column as is needed. The big question is probably where will the row be added or where will the column be added? Follow this example and you should get the idea. Notice the position where the highlighted cell was located when you inserted a row.

The mouse is located on a cell in Row 5 when the Insert Row choice is made. As soon as you select Insert Rows, there will be a blank row added to your spreadsheet.

The blank row is in Row 5. means the blank row was immediately above the row containing the mouse. Now you know where the row will go....it depends on mouse.

This added

blank the

Inserting columns is a lot like inserting rows. It will depend on the location of the mouse too. Observe the location of the mouse when a column is inserted in this example. The mouse is located in Cell E5 when the Insert Columns action is taken. The results are probably what you expected...

The blank column is now the new Column E. In other words, the insert took place to the left of the column containing the mouse. This process of inserting a row can be very handy when you keep a list of names alphabetically down a column and a new person has to be added!
Your heart should be crying out for the deleting of a row or column to be just as simple. It is almost as easy. Let's look at deleting a row first. Obviously, you have to tell Excel which row to be deleted. You do this by clicking on the number of the row in the left side of the spreadsheet. One click will select the row. When you click on a row number, the entire row will be highlighted indicating that what you are about to do will be done to all cells in that row. Note the string of letters from a to j and the particular letter in row 5. You are now ready to delete this row. Click on Edit + Delete from the

Menu. The results are shown below. Notice the absence of the letter e that was on row 5. gone because all of the contents of row 5 have been deleted. Also note that row 6 containing the f seems to "move up" to replace the deleted row. Slide your mouse down until you have hightlighted the Delete option. When Delete is hightlighted, click your mouse to delete the selected row.

It is

You should make a strong distinction between deleting the contents of cells on a row and actually deleting the row. That is, after you selected row 5, hitting the delete key would have deleted the contents of row 5, but left row 5 as blank cells. You delete a row by the Edit + Delete rather than just pressing the Delete key! Deleting columns is very similar to deleting rows. First select the column that needs deleting. You do this by clicking on the letter in the column heading. Then click on Edit from the Menu.

Slide down the drop-down panel to select Delete. When you do, the column will be deleted. Note that Column L moves left to fill the "hole" created by deleting column K.

As before, make a distinction between deleting a column and deleting the contents of cells in a column. Depressing the Delete key will create blank cells in the selected column, but the column will still exist. Selecting Edit + Delete will delete the column and the adjacent column will move to fill the space created by the deleted column. If you had the need to insert/delete several rows or columns, we hope you would expect there would be a better way than inserting/deleting one at a time. There is! From these two pictures, you will see how to insert/delete 3 rows/columns at one time. The trick is to FIRST select three rows/columns.

Select the three rows by clicking on the 4 and dragging down to select row 5 and row 6 too.

Select the three columns by clicking on the B and dragging right to select Column C and Column D

Once you have selected the three rows or three columns, you would follow the normal process to insert or delete as explored above. When you finish, the three rows or columns will be inserted or deleted depending on which action you take. Return Shifting Columns Return | See a Movie of the Process We find that no matter how well we plan the structure and design of a spreadsheet layout....stuff happens! Perhaps you have found yourself in the situation where the data already entered in a column should have been entered in a different column. Prior to learning the "column-shift" trick, we (1) inserted a blank column, (2) copied the errant column, (3) pasted it into the blank column space, and (4) deleted the extra column...several steps. There is a much quicker way that also give me complete control of the order of my columns. It also preserves formulas and functions. Consider the following example:

The original plan was to list the people alphabetically. Unfortunately, the "Carol" column should be displayed before the "Fran" column. The process of shifting the "Carol column" between Betty and Fran is fairly easy. The first thing to do is to select the Carol column by clicking on the F.

With this column selected, we hold the Shift key and drag the left edge of the selected column to its new location. When we are satisfied, we release the mouse and the column has moved to its new home alphabetically between Betty and Fran!

Note, the first couple of times you try this you might not be successful. It is kinda scary to be messing with an entire column of data you just entered. Remember the Undo command if you create a problem for yourself. It is a confidence booster to save your work on your Hard Drive. You know you could always return to your former version! Return | See a Movie of the Process Transpose Rows and Columns Sometimes when you finish a project, you have this bright idea that the table would work better if you transposed the rows and columns. That is, if the column headings were row headings or if the row headings were column headings. Careful planning will let you avoid this frustration. However, if you remember how to transpose, the switch won't take too long regardless of table size. (Hey, we plan, but stuff happens!)

To see how this works, we will start with a simple table with typical column headings that might be found in a grading project. The first step is to select the table and copy it to the clipboard.

Once the table is copied to the clipboard, we select a cell on our spreadsheet where the "transposed" table should begin. Then we select Edit + Paste Special.

Note the selection of a new location for the transposed table. When the Paste Special is selected, a Paste Special Panel with many, many choices for pasting will appear. We are interested in the Transpose checkbox.

We will place a checkmark in the box and click OK to see the results of the transpose in the new location.

Note the swapping of column headings to row headings. Also note that the respective cell formats in the original table have been preserved in the transposed table. The ease of the process should not be used as a substitute for pre-planning! Return

Sheets and Books

The typical Excel spreadsheet may not be what you think. The thoughtful folks in MicroSoft came up with the idea that some Excel developers might wish to have several spreadsheets in a single document. They developed the idea that the document you first open is really like a "book" with many pages. Each page is accessible through "tabs" at the bottom of the document. They even let you do arithmetic across the different pages or sheets! Before we investigate how this is done, you might ask "Why would anyone want to have multiple spreadsheets in a single document?" --- A great question. Suppose you were a manager and had under your control several different budgets organized against the accounting procedures of your company. Technically, as you spend money, you will want to enter the financial actions with the categories that are allowed. For instance, you may have accounts like Personel, Travel, Equipment, Supplies, etc. Technically, all of your revenue is in a single pot. However, you assign or budget certain amounts to each category and you with to keep up with your categories using different spreadsheets. Your company's cash-flow is a function of what is happening across all of these categories. Excel's"book with sheets" feature may be just what you need. A school teacher may have different classes. It may be convenient to keep all of the grades in a single document called My Grades and have each of the classes kept on different sheets in the book. When you are computing grades at the end of a grading period you can open one document and quickly switch between classes rather than have to load new documents. Let's locate the sheets on this small version of an Excel document.

You will notice the default number of sheets is 3 and they are labeled Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. The "active" sheet is Sheet1 in this illustration. In order to view the contents of Sheet2, you only have to click on the Sheet2 tab.

The "click on the sheet tab" is the way you can quickly switch from one sheet to another. The Excel developers made each sheet the same size and the Excel procedures are identical regardless of which sheet is currently in view. You have several options in working with sheets. The list of options available is accessed by right-clicking on a sheet tab. You may need to add more sheets or remove sheets. You certainly will want to change the name from the series Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3,... to a more descriptive tag like Period1, Period2, Period3,...for the teacher with grades. And finally, the order of the sheets may be important. You have full control over the arrangement of the sheets from left to right. Lets examine a few of these options. Insert a new sheet If you right-click on a sheet and select Insert, you will be allowed to select the Worksheetoption to add a new sheet.

When you click on OK, the Excel book will have a new sheet added to the current list of sheets.

Move or Copy
This part is a little tricky. Be sure to keep up with which sheet you right-clicked!

This panel will let you move the sheet relative to the other sheets in your book.

While we have rarely used the Create a Copy feature, this is where you could make a duplicate copy of the selected sheet. That certainly beats copy/paste.

Rename a Sheet We find this feature to be very useful. If you have 10 sheets in your book, the labels Sheet1, Sheet2, ...., Sheet10 are not very useful in finding a particular sheet. Excel lets you rename a sheet practically anything you wish which will be helpful. You need to follow reasonable guidelines: Use small names and no spaces in the names. The longer the name, the wider the tab and the more screen space a single tab will take up. This will have the effect of hiding some tabs and you will have to access the hidden tabs with the left-right arrow keys buttons. Once you select Rename from the sheet options, you will see the sheet you selectedhighlighted as in this example.

All you have to do is to enter from the keyboard the new sheet name you wish to use. When you press Enter, the sheet will be renamed.

Although we predict fewer Excel users will want to do arithmetic across a collection of sheets, we would like to examine some of the capabilities you have in "pulling" data from one spreadsheet to another. For purposes of this explanation, let's assume you are viewing Sheet 1 and the other sheets haven't been renamed.

1 2 3 4 5 Total All Sheets =

Sheet 1
The specifics in the formula used depends on the exact cell address of the data on Sheet2, Sheet3, and Sheet 4. A typical formula to add numbers on three different sheets might look like: =Sheet2!C55 + Sheet3!D38 + Sheet4!E48 The = denotes the direction to Excel to perform some arithmetic. The Sheetx tells Excel which sheet is to be used. the ! is required to indicate to Excel this is a Sheet command The cell address tells Excel where to find the values to add

Headings from different sheets could be pulled to a cell in a different sheet by the simple formula: =Sheet3!B4 This would not only pull the text in Cell B4 on Sheet3, it would also pull the formatting of Cell B4. There are other arithmetic processes using functions across sheets (ie. =SUM, =Count, =Average, etc. that we leave for you to investigate. You might want to use the Help or a reference book as the typing can get tedious.
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Cell Comments
If you are like most computer users, you have a mountain of little notes to yourself about all of the things you haven't committed to memory. Sometimes we use "sticky notes" and attach these reminders on our monitor, the bookcase, and anything else within easy reach. (Don't attach your passwords please!) Wouldn't it be nice to have some "sticky notes" to put inside a complex document like one of your Excel projects. You could put reminders to yourself (or others) what is happening in a particular formula or function. You could put reminders of dates when the data should be changed. These important ideas would be seen when a report was printed if you typed those reminders in a black cell. What if you could create almost "invisible" reminders that wouldn't be printed? You have the idea of what Cell Comments are all about. Let's see how it works.

First we will look at a cell that already has some comments.

The cell with the red triangle in the upper corner has a comment.

The comment may be seen by pausing the mouse over the cell.

To enter your own cell comment, first select the cell that should have the comment. Then select Insert + Comment.

This will let you enter in the text box the comment you wish to associate with the selected cell.

Cautions: Too many comments spaced very close together can cause problems with those of us with "mouse-pointing" deficiencies. Too much text in the comment section will cause a large text box to view your comments and obscure much of your spreadsheet. Think "lean and mean" rather than saying all you know about the cell. If you can put comments in a cell, you have to be able to change your mind or edit the comment out. Deleting the contents of the cell doesn't remove the comments. That is, the Delete key won't remove the comments or the "red triangle". The best way to edit/delete the comments is from the Menu. Choosing Edit + Clear + Comments lets you delete your comments.

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Split Screen
Return | See a Movie of the Process The Excel developers anticipated some data-entry problems and came up with a nice way of addressing the problem of determining where you are when entering data. Sometimes it is easy to forget which row or column a particular number should be entered. Excel uses the "split screen" technique to make it easier! Let's look at a specific example to understand the problem and see how Excel can help. Suppose we have a teacher trying to keep grades in Excel. The teacher has the names of students in a column and the different testing events as column headings.

This might be a small portion of the gradebook. In reality, there are many more students and many more tests.

The teacher is likely to find himself looking at a window of a portion of the spreadsheet and forget which student row he is on or which test column!

The soluton is to scroll up and check the test and then scroll left and check the student! Not very efficient if you have "mental lapses" several times during the data-entry process.

This is a "bird's eye-view" of the problem.

The purple represents the cells containing the names and tests. The black rectangle represents the current location of the Excel window. The cell in the middle is on some row and some column....but which one? Excel has two small bars located in the top right and bottom right corners of the window. The top bar will let you split the screen horizontally into two sections.

The bottom bar lets you split the screen vertically into two sections. These bars may be pulled out independently of each other. That is, you can use one split screen without using the other. In this case we will use both bars.

Dragging the Bars Out

We will click and drag each bar into place. The Horizontal bar will be dropped down just below the row containing the Test names and the Vertical bar will be dropped to the right of the column containing the names of the students. Technically, there are 4 windows. Now, the pleasant surprise. When you scroll to the right and down in the window containing the places where you would enter grades, the window above the Horizontal bar remains on the screen and the window to the left of the Vertical bar remains on the screen. How easy it is to see who's grade should go where!

Two questions might arise in using the Split Screen bars:

1. 2.

What happens to the printout if I choose to print with Split Screen bars pulled out? How can I remove the bars when I am finished data entry?

The printing question is answered quickly - nothing! The printing process ignores the location of the Split Screen bars. The second question requires reflecting back on your Kindergarden days when the teacher said to put up your toys when you finished playing with them. To remove the Split Screen bars simply drag them back where they belong...back in their respective corners out of the way. Return | See a Movie of the Process

8. Charts and Graphs * Bar Graph Line Graph Circle Graph Bar Graph Return | See a Movie of the Process Excel has a nice "bar graph wizard" which will let you choose among several styles of bar graphs to achieve the visual effect you are seeking when you choose to display your table data in a graph. The technical side of a bar graph requires the visual effect focus the viewer's attention on the length of the bar rather than the "thickness" of the bar. One could use a line segment to achieve this technical requirement. However, the thickness of a line is generally considered not practical as it is too small to make the bar visible. Hence, the width's of the bars in the graph are required to be the same. Excel handles the bar widths perfectly! Let's explore making a bar graph with Excel's Graph Wizards. First, we start with a simple data table. (We will use this table to explore other types of graphs. For purposes of this example, we want to display the sales force and their accomplishments to date. If that is our goal, we must select the particular cells from the table that will provide Excel what it needs. We will select the column headings and sales information from the table by clicking in Cell A1 and dragging to Cell B6. Note there are other ways to select this block of cells. Left-handed developers may find it easier to drag the other diagonal. We now look for a way to tell Excel we want to graph the selected data. You may use the Insert + Chart from the Menu or you may click on the Chart Wizard button on the Toolbar. This will bring out the Chart Wizard. This wizard will give you a series of different panels with things to do to customize the "look" and "content" of your graph. Let's follow along the different Panels of the Chart Wizard. This first lets you select the type of graph you wish to use.

 We did indicate that we planned to have a Bar Graph to show our data. The left panel of the wizard gives you categories or types of graphs from which to pick. By selecting one of these types, you will see the different choices of graphs of that type in the right window. Also, if you click once on a particular type of graph displayed, a small phrase describing that graph will appear. We will use the vertical bar graph or column graph in this example. You get a preview of the graph to check. There are some choices to make here, but we will accept the defaultsettings and move on.

Next we will "dress up" our graph by completing some of the Chart Options.

You probably will need some supplemental information to help the viewer understand what your chart is all about. You could enter a Title and label for the listing of Salesmen.

Next we get to locate the graphic. The choices would give you the opportunity to put the graphic on top of the spreadsheet table or place it in a different sheet in the spreadsheet "book", but on a different sheet from the data table. We will accept the default suggestion.

The bar graph is placed on top of the spreadsheet document containing the table. The graph is a drawing object. As such, it is adjustable by all of the tools you can adjust drawing objects. This would include moving, sizing, etc. A "neat" feature is the linking of the data table to the graph. If you should make a change in the data table, the graph would automatically make the associated graph change. Consider this example when Tom adds a little to his sales total.

Just as soon as the value in Tom's sales is entered, the bar for Tom is changed from its former size. There are many variations on this theme as you take different actions and make changes throughout interacting with the Wizard. We strongly recommend you "play" with some of these actions and see if you can achieve a degree of control of the final outcome by "tweaking" the options presented on different Wizard panels. Return | See a Movie of the Process The Line Graph The choice of a Line graph to display your data is appropriate when the data in your data table has a "continuous" nature. The most common (appropriate) use of the line graph is found in describing events that have been captured in time. For instance, temperatue is measured at regular time intervals, say on the hour. While there are no "actual" readings between 9:00 and 10:00, we know that during this time interval that the temperature probably made a smooth change from the temperature at 9:00 and the temperature at 10:00. This "continuous" nature of time lets us connect the dots in a line. Excel doesn't ask whether the data you collect is continuous or not, it just lets YOU select the chart. To prove this fact, we will illustrate how to display your data in a line graph even when you shouldn't choose a line graph! First let's look at a data table. It is easy to see that this data is NOT, continuous in nature, but we move along anyway.

We select the data we need from our data This is accomplished by clicking and dragging the diagonal from Cell A1 to B6 or from B1 to Either way, we select a block of our data

table. across A6. table.

 Now we tell Excel that we want to insert a chart. We may use the Menu and Insert + Chart or click on the Chart Wizard button on the toolbar. This will introduce the first of 4 panels of the Wizard. You identify the type or category of graph you need by selecting from the left window. The different kinds of graphs of that type are then displayed in the right window. If you click once on a particular type of line graph, you will see a short phrase giving you a hint as to what that graph is all about. Even though WE know the selection of line graph is appropriate, Excel doen't know and so we press on to the Source of the Data. Excel doesn't know how the data is contained in the block of cells we selected. We give Excel this information by accepting the Columns option since our data from the data table is displayed in columns. The third panel lets us decorate the table with the appropriate labels to help the viewer understand about our

data.

When we are satisfied, we move to the last panel which lets us tell Excel where to display the graph.

For purposes of this demonstration, we will select to have Excel display the graph as a drawing object on the spreadsheet page containing the data table.

The steps to select a line graph for an appropriate data situation and an inappropriate situation are identical. As in most situations involving decisions with a computer, the machine will do what we tell it to...even when it is the wrong decision!

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The Circle Graph The choice of a Circle Graph is appropriate when you are attempting to show how parts relate to the whole. A good example of this might be when you show percentages of the total. The basic concept of a circle graph is area displayed as "slices of pie". It is important that each slice represent the proper percentage of the whole. Excel will draw those slices the proper percent with is a great improvement over using a protractor or just estimating how large each slice should be! This table might represent a typical table where each of the sales items is also represented as a percent of the total. If you would like to represen this data in a graph, the appropriate choice would be the Circle Graph or Pie Graph.

needed for the graph. First, we will select the appropriate data that is

Once the data is selected (click and drag), we should tell Excel that we wish to insert a chart. We can use the Menu process and select Insert + Chart or we may elect to click on the Chart Wizard button located on the toolbar. Excel will open the first of 4 panels in the wizard. The first panel lets you select the type of graph you wish to use. The choice we prefer is the Circle graph or Pie Graph.

We can select from the type of graphs in the left window and see the different varieties of graphs in the right window.

If you click on a particular graph type in the right window, Excel will display a text hint below to give you a better idea of what this graph is all about.

When we have picked the best graph, we select Next and move to the next panel that lets us identify the source of the data for Excel.

Since our data is arranged in columns in the Data Table, we will select columns here. The third panel lets us label the graph with headings that might be appropriate for helping viewers understand our data.

When we are satisfied, we will click Next and proceed to the last Panel to tell Excel where to display this data.

For purposes of this exercise, we will choose to display the graph with the Data Table so we select Sheet1.

Note that the different "pie-slices" are the appropriate size to match the percentages in our Data Table. The color may or may not be helpful depending on what you are doing with the final project. (Do you have a color printer?)

Some people find the legend a little small. It is a separate object in a collection of objects. You can click on a single name and enlarge the text with the Font size button of Excel. Enlarging the box containing the names will not enlarge the text. However, you can size the entire graph smaller or larger. A word of caution....as you make the graph smaller, the text contents will become most difficult to read!

9. Efficiency in building spreadsheets

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* Copy Fill Copy Copy/Paste Copy Auto Serial Copy between two or more spreadsheets Toggle view of formulas and functions Copy - Fill Return | See a Movie of the Process Excel offers several nice ways to efficiently copy form a single cell to adjacent cells. One of these ways is the Copy-Fill process. Efficient techniques are always of value, and copy-fill is most useful. Let's explore this feature using a specific example. Suppose you wanted to get a series of "TSU's" in column B. You could type each one or you could use the Fill process.

The task is to add 9 more entries First select the cell containing the TSU like Cell B1. and drag down to Cell B10.

Then we will select Edit + Fill + Down to tell Excel to copy the contents of the selected cell to the cells going down to the end of the selected region.

(Note the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+D and Ctrl+R)

Results!!!

While we don't consider ourselves to be lazy, why take the extra effort and risk making a typing error. Note that the fill process also copied the format (bold and center) that was active on cell B1 to the rest of the cells. If eveybody in your Christmas mailing list was from Columbus, would you want to type the City and State for everybody? Why not type it once and Fill Down the rest of the people.

While the fill-down process would be useful if you had to type 500 sentences like "I will not pull Mary-Jane's Pigtails", the real benefit comes in producing formulas and functions that are similar. Consider this example of similar formulas.
A B Number 2 6 8 235 31 C Sum =A2 + B2 =A3 + B3 =A4 + B4 =A5 + B5 D Product =A2 * B2 =A3 * B3 =A4 * B4 =A5 * B5

1 2 3 4 5

Number 1 3 2 13 25

The formulas differ by what row they are on. Consider using the Fill Down process rather than risk typing errors with so many keystrokes.

A 1 2 3 4 5

B Number 2 6 8 235 31

C Sum =A2 + B2

D Product =A2 * B2

Number 1 3 2 13 25

Will Excel know what the correct formula should be? You bet! The copy process is called a Relative Copy. Excel will fill down with the correct formulas and compute the correct sums and products for each cell. Let's look at a different example. Suppose you are a manager of a small company with several salesmen. You wish to keep up with the weekly sales of each of your employees as well as keep a running total of the sales each day. You might be interested in a spreadsheet like this.

You would find each salesman's weekly total with the Sum function. If you get it correct in Cell F2, you could use the Fill Down to get it correct for the other employees.

You could keep up with your daily sales by correctly entering the Sum function in Cell B7 and using the Fill Right process to keep up with the daily totals for the rest of the days in the week. The efficiency of the Fill feature will "smack you in your face" if you had 75 salesmen instead of 4! Note that you can choose to Fill in any of four ways. Excel provides keyboard shortcuts for the more popular fills. It is well worth leaning your keyboard shortcuts for this and other Excel features. Return | See a Movie of the Process

 Copy and Paste We are not sure who in the Computer Science world first came up with the idea of Copy/Paste, but all developers of computer documents of any type owe a debt of gratitude. Excel developers probably should move to the head of the line of the "thank you" givers! The obvious use of the copy/paste process should not go slighted. The instances when you carefully format a cell and wish to have the exact information with the exact cell format in another cell comes up quite frequently. Rather than re-type the cell contents and re-format the second cell, you execute a copy/paste routine and the labor is reduced to a few keyboard maneuvors (Control + C and Control + V) or choosing Edit + Copy and Edit + Paste from the Menu. You may prefer to use the Copy and Paste buttons on the Menu. We think they gave you so many different ways to Copy/Paste because you find so many opportunities to make your work more efficient! Copy & Paste Buttons

In Excel, there are other, more subtle benefits of the Copy/Paste process. These show up in cells containing formulas or functions. Consider this example.

The ABC company is developing a spreadsheet to show it's earnings by Quarters for the year 1999 and the percentages of the annual earnings for each quarter. The pattern of Year 1999 should be repeated for Year 2000.
We note the quarter headings could be typed and formatted, but we prefer to use the copy/paste process. We select the cells we wish to copy and paste in the location we want the titles copied.

We note the row of headings for Year 1999 begins one cell to the right of 1999 and one cell down. We select to paste the headings in the same location relative to the Year 2000 cell. Let's enter the earnings for Year 2000.

There are several ways to make Excel compute the Total earnings for Year 2000. We are going to use the Copy/Paste method. But Wait!!!! The formula or function in Cell G3 is adding the quarterly earnings for Year 1999!!! If you copy Cell G3 to Cell G8, this would give the wrong answer!!! Take heart. Cell G3 looks like this: =SUM(C3:F3) and NOT =350,000 + 355,000 + 410,000 + 380,000 The magic of Excel's Copy/paste with formulas will copy the function RELATIVE to its new location. That is, when we paste in cell G8, the function will be =SUM(C8:F8) just as if we typed it ourselves! And the results are just fine.

Now we need the percentages of the annual earnings for Year 2000. The long and tedious way would be to divide the quarterly earnings by the annual total for each quarter. Then we would have to format each cell as a percent with one decimal place to be consistent with Year 1999. Thank you for copy/paste! Let's take a look at the formulas and functions so far. In particular we are interested in the formulas for Year 1999.

We will describe the formula in Cell F4 in a "funny" way. Divide the value in the cell above this one by the value in the cell to its immediate right.

This is what is meant by refering to a cell by its "relative" position. If we copy the cell in F4 and paste it in cell F9 using a "relative copy", then Cell F9 should contain the results of dividing the value in the cell above this one by the value in the cell to its immediate right! Guess what....Excel's default copy/paste function with cells containing formulas and functions is the Relative Copy. In an attempt to be most efficent, we will copy ALL of the percentage cells at one time. And each will be a relative copy/paste. Note that Percentage also needs to be copied, so let's get all of the data we need at once.

By selecting from Percent through 25.4%, we correctly identify all of the information that needs to be pasted beginning at the proper cell under Year 2000!

When the Paste command is given, you have the correct calculations AND the correct cell formats...at least you have the same format as the cells in Row 4! We will discuss in a different tutorial a copy/paste that is NOT the relative copy/paste. You should learn both and then choose the correct one to use to save you time and also produce accurate results. Return

Auto Serial
Excel contains a neat feature which can save you some time. If you let it, Excel will try to anticipate what you mean and give it to you automatically. This is especially useful when you have a collection of adjacent cells which have a numerical pattern in them. For example, you might wish to number a list of items 1, 2, 3, ..., 50. One process would be to type each of these 50 numbers one at a time. The other process would be to let Excel have some of the work. Let's see how it happens. Most children above the age of 6 can correctly guess what comes next. The trick is to give Excel enough information so it can guess what you want. With numbers, the pattern is established with two numbers. After you have entered the two numbers 1 and 2, you have done all the typing you need to get Excel to finish the work. The rest you do with the mouse. You select the cell at the beginning of the pattern (the 1) and drag to the cell at the end of the pattern (the 2) and release the mouse. This will hightlight the two-cell block. Notice the "bump" on the lower right corner. Carefully position your mouse over this bump and click and drag the bump down.

Left Image: As you are dragging down, notice the text box that quickly displays the numbers Excel plans to put in the cells. You will continue to see these anticipated values until you release the mouse. Continue dragging down until you see the last number you wish to have in your list of numbers. Right Image: When you have reached the point where the listing of numbers should stop, you should release the mouse and the numbers will be displayed. The sequence of numbers should follow the pattern established by your initial selection.

If you established an initial pattern with 1 and 3, then Excel would guess you intend for the list to be 1,3,5,7,9,... If you used an initial pattern of 1 and 1.5, then Excel would guess 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, ...

That's pretty helpful...but Excel "sees" more things than just numbers as objects with a serial order. Let's look at a few others.

This is the beginning of copying the days of the week. If you look closely you will see the"bump" in the lower right corner of the cell containing Monday.

This is the beginning of copying the months of the year. If the dragging continues to the right, the remaining months of the year will be pasted in the cells on Row 2.

You might not have guessed that numbers combined with text can have a serial order. Excel will "guess" what comes next if numbers are added at the end of text.

Excel will guess you wish Test 1, Test 2, Test 3, ... as you drag to the right. Had you chosen to drag down rather than right, the list would have appeared as: Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 displayed in Column A going down. This could be useful in building column headings with dates. (April 1, April 2, April 3, ...) We found it something of a disappointment that the serial copying does not extend to text without numbers. If you start a pattern with A and end the pattern with B, Excel will guess you want A,B,A,B,AB, ... rather than A, B, C, D, ... We were pleased that the "dragging of the bump" process extends to the copying of cells containing formulas or functions. The drag will produce a "relative" copy/paste similar to the Fill-Down or Fill-Right discussed in another tutorial. Excel provides several alternative paths to accomplish the same thing. We think this is neat! Return

Copy Between Spreadsheets

We seriously enjoy working on a computer, but to work more efficiently is an even greater joy! A trick you may not have added to your list of efficient tricks is the duplication of previously developed work. You may have spent hours pouring over an Excel project until you had it just right. Later, you may find yourself in need of a very similar project. Consider how effecient it would be to copy the original work and make slight changes to have the new project completed! Let's see how Excel lets you copy work from one project to another. In this example, an elementary teacher is keeping a gradebook project on her class. She has a separate gradebook for each subject she teaches. Consider this spreadsheet the first project she develops.

She has labeled the gradebook mathematics, formatted the column headings, carefully built and checked the formulas/functions to compute her grades, entered the names of the students and alphabetized them. Now she needs to repeat all that work for each of the subjects she teaches. Fortunately, she remembers how to make Excel work efficiently for her. She loads her mathematics gradebook into Excel and then opens a new document by selecting File + New. In this example, we will build entirely different spreadsheet documents rather than try to keep all of her work in a single gradebook. Not a better idea, just one the teacher prefers. Now she has a brand new spreadsheet. The title is Book1 until she saves it.

Now, she goes back to the Mathematics document. This is accomplished by clicking on the Window and selecting the open document Mathematics.xls. Note the checkmark beside Book 1. This means that this is the document currently being viewed. This will bring back the Mathematics document. We want to copy ALL of the gradebook. To do this, she will click in the cell block above the row numbers and to the left of the column letters. This will select all cells. She then copies the selected cells to the clipboard (Control + C or Edit + Copy from the Menu or click on the copy button in the button panels - whichever she prefers).

After the information is copied to the Clipboard, she will return to the blank spreadsheet labeled Book 1. Again, note that Mathematics.xls has the checkmark indicating this is the document open for view. She highlights Book 1 and selectes it with a click.

She selects Cell A1 to indicate where the document should begin when she pastes. Then she will execute a Paste command. Note she has returned to Book1.

Note the label has to be changed (by the teacher) from Mathematics to Science. The new Science gradebook will have all of the students' names in order and the column headings and formulas/functions from her Mathematics gradebook. She has to save the work by selecting File and giving the new document a good file name, like Science. She could save a little effort by performing the duplication process BEFORE she begins to enter grades! This process illustrates how she copied one document to another. Remember to look under the Window in the Menu to access other open Excel documents. Before leaving, we should point out that the duplication process is very similar should the teacher have wished to keep all of the grades in a single document. She would have selected a different sheet from the sheet tabs at the bottom of the Mathematics document.

(If you are not comfortable with Sheets, you might review the Sheets tutorial back on the Main Menu for Excel topics under Useful Organizational Features. Return

Toggle Views of Formulas & Functions

Excel offers developers a feature which is cool to use and may have value in helping you develop your own numerical spreadsheet projects. Have you every been looking at a page full of formulas and functions and wished you could see the formula rather than the results of the formula?

The folks from Excel anticipated the need and offered an easy way to toggle back and forth between the two views of the same cell. Let's take a look at a typical spreadsheet in the "normal" view and then at the same spreadsheet in the "formula/function" view. This might be a typical spreadsheet showing the test average of each student as well as the averages for each of the three tests.

In order to view the same spreadsheets with the formulas and functions visible, you need to depress the Control Key and the "tilda" Key at the same time. And now you ask what is a tilda? Look on your keyboard above the Tab key for the key with the ~ sign...the tilda. (If you are a geometry student you might call it the "similar to" sign.) If you press Control + ~ you will see the spreadsheet with the formulas and functions showing.

You might note the size of the columns is expanded. This is because you need more room to see all of the cell contents. Depressing the same two keys simultneously will revert to the "normal" view. Return 10. Drawing in Excel Drawing Toolbar and Line Tool Arrow Tool Insert Clipart/Image File Rectangles and Ovals AutoShapes Arrange order of objects The Drawing Toolbar Excel, like all of the Office suite programs, makes extensive use of buttons to allow you to perform some action with the click of a button visible on the screen containing your document. The drawing buttons are grouped together on a Drawing Toolbar which you can choose to make visible or not. The Drawing toolbar looks like this.

The location is typically docked at the bottom of the screen below the document. Note there are several buttons with down-arrows indicating choices. We will begin our exploration of the Drawing Toolbar with the action you take to make the toolbar visible/hidden. The command to adjust the toolbars is found under the View+Toolbar from the main menu. The checkmarks beside the different toolbars indicates the checked toolbar is currently visible. The lack of a check means the toolbar is hidden. In order to make a toolbar visible, simply select one that has no checkmark. To hide a toolbar, simply select one that has a checkmark. We generally suggest always keeping the Standard, Format, and Drawing toolbars out and hiding the others until you have a project which makes using the toolbar useful. Each toolbar takes up a little document space. The smaller the document space, the more scrolling you will have to do to see your spreadsheet. The most commonly used drawing the line, tools are displayed on the toolbar itself. These are arrow, oval, and rectangle. We will begin exploring the features of the line tool. Many of the attributes of the line tool are also available for the arrow tool. Once the line button is selected, you can draw on the spreadsheet. The drawn object will sit "on top" of the spreadsheet. If you conceptualize the drawing to be made on transparent paper placed on top of your document, you will have the idea of how Excel handles layers with drawings. You start by clicking on a starting point and dragging to a new place on the spreadsheet. When you release the mouse, you will have a line segment with handlebar "dots" on the end. You may click on either end and drag to a new location. The line segment's direction will change to reflect your new movement. In this way, the length of the line may be increased or decreased. The line itself has attributes that you can adjust to your liking. You may change the color and you may change the line style in two ways. The process is to first select the object with a click and then select the attributes.

Clicking on the down-arrow for theLine Color lets you select the appropriate color for the line.

Clicking on the Line Stylebutton lets you select from the different styles of line.

Clicking on the Line Segment button lets you choose from the different options for displaying your line in segments.

These attribute-adjusting features are important because they also let you control the same features of lines in other drawn objects. For example, you could draw a square and adjust the attributes of the lines of the square. Return

Drawing with the Arrow Tool Perhaps the most useful of all the drawing tools is the Arrow Tool. When you feel different fonts, cell backgrounds, font colors are not enough to draw the viewer's attention to a place in your spreadsheet, you might consider placing an arrow pointing to the portion needing additional highlighting. The arrow just may be the tool of choice. By clicking on the Arrow Tool in the Drawing toolbar you activate Excel's drawing feature for making arrows. Note the arrow tool and the line tool are very similar. Be sure to click on the tool of choice! Once you have selected the Arrow tool, you begin by clicking at an appropriate starting point for the arrow. You drag in the general direction the arrow should point. You will be able to make adjustments by clicking on either end of the arrow and extending the length of the arrow or the direction the arrow should point. The initial click places the beginning point and when you release the mouse you will be setting the location of the tip of the arrow. Just like the Line Tool, the Arrow Tool has attributes you can change.

Choose this button to select the Styles

Choose this button to select the different Colors

Choose this button to select the differentSegments

Choose this button to customize the Arrow

This is an example of the arrow shown above having changed the color, style, and also been customized. It's hard to imaging anyone not pulled to look at whatever you point to with this arrow on your spreadsheet! Return

Inserting Images in Excel The Office suite of products allows you to insert images into your document. The process is identical across the Office suite of applications. If you have learned how to insert objects in one of the other applications, you already know how to insert objects in Excel. Conversely, if you are learning for the first time, you can transfer this knowledge to any other Office application you have on your computer! The types of images you can use are placed into two categories: (1) Clipart from the application itself and (2) images external to the application. We will look at examples of both of these. When your applications were installed, a collection of clipart images was installed also. Office chooses to call this collection the Clipart Gallery. The different versions of Excel will give you slightly different screen looks to access images in this collection, but all work very intuitively and you should be able to determine exactly what to do from the screen prompts regardless of your version. You can access this image collection from the Menu or from the toolbar. Select Image + Picture + Clip Art.

Depending on the specific version of the application, you will see a selection wizard which will allow you to narrow your selection down from the entire clipart collection.

Note that the images are grouped into categories of images. Try to conceptualize the type of image you are seeking and match that image to one of the Clipart Gallery's categories. Note the number of categories in the default setup. If you were wishing to find a picture of a lion, you might select the animals category. This would bring up all of the animal pictures in the collection.

 If you see an image that is acceptable, simple select it with a click. This brings up a small popup which lets you insert the image in your document. Click on the insert button and your will have your selected clipart image copied to your document.

The clipart image will function like the drawn objects...it sits on top of your spreadsheet document. You maydrag it to another location. You may select one of the sizing handlebars around the edges of the object and make the larger or smaller depending on your needs.

If you don't select Clip Art but select From File, you are telling Excel that you wish to use a file NOT installed with the application, but found somewhere else on the hard drive or on a diskette. If you change your mind, you may select the object and press the Delete Key to remove the object and go select again.

Inserting images that are not from the Clipart Gallery installed with Excel is conceptually similiar. You tell Excel to insert and image, you tell Excel where the image is located, and then you say OK. You may have noticed the way you tell Excel what you want to do when you started inserting Clipart.

Several Windows operating systems feature a folder in the My

Documents folder called My Pictures. When you select From File, the operating system will send you to this location first. If this is not where you have your images, you may navigate to the location using the down-arrow.

If this is the picture you want, simple click on the Insert button and the picture will be displayed on your spreadsheet. Note the image may not be the correct size or location. Drag the image to the location on your spreadsheet where you wish it to be located. The size of the image may not be appropriate. Use the sizing handlebars to drag the image to a smaller/larger size. Comment: We strongly recommend you begin keeping your own image collection. The clipart that is installed with the program is designed to appeal to general audiences. Your professional needs of images may not be met with any depth by the general collection in the Clipart Gallery. Begin your own collection of images so you can quickly find just the right one to fit a particular project. Return

The Rectangle and Oval Tools Two drawing tools that are often useful are the Rectangle and Oval tool. They function almost identically and we will investigate both tools at the same time. The two tool buttons are located on the Drawing Toolbar and are easy to spot beside the other buttons. We choose not to insult you with descriptions of which is which!

Once the buttons are selected, you click in the spreadsheet and drag. The resulting shape will be the oval or rectangle. The location of the object can be changed by dragging the drawn object to a better place. Thesizing handlebars let you adjust the dimensions of the object. You can make a perfectsquare by dragging while the Shift Key is depressed! You can make a perfectcircle by dragging while the Shift Key is depressed!

HINT

The inside of the object may be filled in a color of choice. The Fill Tool has the paint bucket icon and the downarrow lets you select the color of choice for a fill.

These objects have been filled with two of the choices of colors available. The edges or borders of these objects are similar to the Line and Arrow tools. These borders have attributes that can be changed. These examples show changes in the Line Styles and the Segments.

Perhaps the most useful of the features of Ovals and Rectangles is the ability to add text at the same drawing layer as the object. If you Right-Click on one of the objects, you will see a panel giving you the ability to add text.

Select the Add Text choice

Enter your text.

AutoShapes in Excel The standard drawing tools may be all an "artist" needs to create something special. For those of us who are more "artistically challenged", Excel offers a set of pre-drawn shapes. These shapes are called theAutoShapes. By clicking on AutoShapes (bottom left corner) you will bring up categories of shapes. Highlight the category you want to see the different shapes in that category. If you find the shape you are seeking, select it by a click. If you click and drag your mouse in your spreadsheet, the image will begin being displayed on your document. Stop dragging when the size you want has been achieved. The object drawn should be a "perfect" replica of the image you selected with AutoShapes. We know you could draw this cross with a series of straight lines....but would it look as nice....drawn as quickly? The object may be re-sized by clicking on the sizing handlebars and increasing/decreasing as you need. Rectangle This object is very similar to the Oval and objects you may have drawn. That is, you can also control the fill of the object as well as the border attributes. This is the cross above filled with Red. (You would use the Fill Tool to select the appropriate color for your cross.) The Paintbucket is the icon to remind you of the Fill attributes. AutoShapes has other categories you could use for your drawing needs.

If you can't be satisfied with the draw with the Arrow tool, you might the different arrows in AutoShapes Arrows.

objects you can want to check into under Block

The selection process and sizing process are identical to the way you draw any of the objects found in AutoShapes...Select, Click, and Drag.

We find the Callouts to be unique enough to explore. Do you remember the comic strip characters that talked to each other? They had a "balloon" in the air above their heads with a pointer indicating who was doing the talking. Callouts give you different "balloons" to use. For whatever reason, we tend to use the first three most frequently in our Callouts. The other choices are useful, but we tend to return to our favorites. Once you select your Callout, you click and drag to size the object. When you release the mouse, a textbox appears letting you enter the text you wish in the Callout. Simply type your message. The text may be controlled by the Font, Style, Alignment buttons available for text in any spreadsheet cell. The really part comes when location. direction and stop can control the Callout object. If you of the object and will will flow following

neat you drag the "yellow tip" to a new The pointer will follow your drag when you stop. In this way you "pointer" of your balloon! Your text is in the same layer as the move the object, the text will be a part move accordingly. If you re-size the callout object, the text the "word wrap" concept. Neat! Return

Order of Grouping Objects

The drawing tools of Excel follow what is called the "layers" approach to drawing. Each new object is drawn on its own "transparent" sheet of paper. The order of the sheets is determined by the order of the drawing...that is, the last object is on top and the first object is on bottom. Since multiple objects drawn on a single spreadsheet will require that some object be on the bottom and some object be on the top, you might think this could lead to serious planning to achieve the desired effect. In fact, you can draw the objects in any order and then rearrange their order on the spreadsheet very easily. Let's take a look at how it is done.

The image above would indicate that three objects have been drawn. Since the red object appears in the back, it was probably drawn first. The yellow object was drawn second and the blue object drawn last. We are not really sure of the drawing order, but the current layer order is red, yellow, blue with red on the bottom. Let's start with this arrangement and change the order. The first thing to do is to select one of the objects. In this example, the blue triangle was selected first. Note the selection process will outline the object by activating the sizing handlebars. When objects are positioned on top of each other it may be difficult to select the object you want. If a "mistake" is made, click off the object and try again.

Once the object is selected (blue triangle), you click on Drawing + Order and review the choices. If you would like to move the triangle back one layer, you would select the Send Backward choice.

Send Backward will move the layer of the object back one level. This should accomplish the desired shift in the image.

Original Position

Results with the Send to Back choice

Consider what Order choice should be made to accomplish the change indicated in the panel below. Determine for yourself what single action would accomplish the desired result.

Make this collection of objects....

look like this collection of objects.

The Yellow Oval is Selected first

The final position is achieved

Give yourself 100 points if you correctly identified the Send to Back choice. Give yourself another 25 points if you thought of the Send Backward choice executed twice. When you have multiple objects on your spreadsheet, you may control the order of the objects regardless of their arrival order. You simply select one of the objects, select Draw + Order, and apply the proper action(s) until you have the desired result. Return

11. Use of Some Special Functions If Function Text Count Random Number Math & Trig Statistical Pivot Table (Needed)

The IF Function
Excel offers several logical functions for your help in developing your spreadsheet projects. We find the IF function to be one of the more useful functions in the kinds of projects we develop. The typical use of the IF function will follow the general format of:

=if(relationship,true,false)
IF Function =if(a1 = b1, true, false) =if(b6 > 500, true, false) =if(K6 = "Washington", true, false) Meaning: Is it true that... the contents of Cell a1 equal the contents of cell b1? the contents of Cell b6 is greater than 500? the contents of Cell K6 is the same as the text Washington?

In each of these examples, you could look at the cells in the spreadsheet and determine whether each statement was true or false. The logic of the IF function is to ask Excel to analyze the relationship statement. If the statement is true, display one value. If the relationship is false, return the other. In particular, the function =IF(A3<450, 5, 12) located in Cell B3 would direct Excel to look at the value in cell A3. If that number is less than 450, then Excel would display the value 5 in Cell B3. If that number is not less than 450, then Excel would display the value 12 in Cell B3. The contents of Cell B3 is conditional. It depends on what value is in Cell A3.

A 1 2 3 4 534

D 1 2

3 4

134

In this case, Cell A3 is NOT less than 450. Cell B3 should contain 12

In this case Cell A3 IS less than 450. Cell B3 should contain the value 5

The ability to cause Excel to dynamically change the contents of a cell based on some data entry in a cell is a powerful feature. Before we look at some specific examples of the use of the IF function, let's explore some of the options you have for establishing a relationship. Relationship Meaning Less Than, Greater Than Equal Not Equal Less than or Equal, Greater Than or Equal

< or > = <> <= or >=

Let's look at some of these functions in a spreadsheet. Column C contains the function and Column D contains the results.

Comment: Row 2: The values in Cell A and Cell B are the same (true) so the function returns 45 Row 3: The values in Cell A and Cell B are not the same (false) so the function returns Not OK Row 4: The value in Cell A4 is greater than 5000 (true) so the function returns Over Row 5: -6 is less than -1 (true) so the function returns the value in Cell A5

Points to remember about the IF function format 1. Text may be used, but should be inside quotation marks 2. Arithmetic may be used in the IF function 3. A response of "" (quotations with nothing inside) will return a blank cell

Let's take a look at a few examples to give you an idea of some ways to use the IF function: 1. Checking a balance

An accounting project requires that a sum of numbers not exceed 200. By entering a 'check' IF function in an adjacent cell, the flag of TOO Much will appear if some adjustments have to be made. If the Sum is within budget, the IF function will return a blank cell and there are no flags.
2. Checking a data entry

You would like to prompt the person entering data if they have made an error. The two codes will check if the Area code is 1 or 2-digits (Too Small) or 4 or more (Too large). If the data entered is 3 digits, the cells will be blank.

3. Grading a Test Question

The formula in Cell B4 could be placed anywhere and provide feedback to the student. There is often some difficulty in checking text. What are text in the set of correct answers (G Bush, George Bush, etc.) This IF statement checks for Bush and not bush or BUSH! Because there could be so many legitimate answers, you might want to move to a multiple choice question.

The following function uses Excel's "nested" IF statements to determine a letter grade based on the point spread for converting an average to a letter grade. A discussion precedes the example.

Excel will allow you to group two or more IF statements in a single IF function. It is called nesting. The logic works like this. Suppose Cell M6 contains the average grade for a grading period. Also suppose the grading scheme works like: 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, etc. First check: =IF(M6 >89,"A",continue checking) - Grade is 90-100-Give A and stop Second check: =IF(M6 >79,"B",continue checking) - Grade is 80-89-Give B and stop Third check: =IF(M6 >69,"C",continue checking) - Grade is 70-79-Give C and stop Fourth check: =IF(M6 >59,"D","F") - Grade is 60-69-Give D and stop or grade is 59 or less-Give F and stop

Follow the flow of logic. If the grade is 90 - 100, the first check will return the A. If not, the checking will continue. The second check will determine if the grade is 80 or above and return the B. (Note the grade is NOT above 89 since you are still checking.) By the third check you know the grade is not 80 and up. You check if M6 is in the range of 70-79. If it is, return the C and if not, continue checking. Finally, if the grade is between60-69 return a D and if not, return the F. Now, let's put all of these IF statements into a single IF statement that could be entered in a single cell and determine the letter grade for the student on Row 6.
=IF(M6>89,"A",IF(M6>79,"B",IF(M6>69,"C",IF(M6>59,"D","F"))))
The logic for the "nested" IF statement is the same as the logic for the set of separate IF statements....but you can put all of the statements into a single cell! The number of places where you can use the IF function is only limited by your creativity and patience in entering the function. Enjoy! Return

Text Functions
Excel has several functions that let you tear apart text and put it together again. Individually, these functions may seem like "play" functions, but when combined with other functions, they can provide a very useful tool to the developer.

Length Function
The Length function provides you the ability to determine how many characters are in a cell containing data. For example, the cell containing the word TROY has 4 characters. The function looks like this: =LEN(Cell Address)

Some examples might be: =Len(B4) or = LEN(m15) The formulas displayed in Column D were entered in Column C.

The results are displayed for your viewing.

Numbers in cells are treated slightly different. Look at this table and see what characters are NOT counted. It would appear that all of the keystrokes used in numbers are counted, but not some of the formatting features you can use to display the number. The comma separator and the $ used to denote money are not counted with the LEN function. What would you suspect about the % sign? Once data is entered in a cell, you have the ability to determine the number of characters in the text with the LEN function.

Left and Right Functions

You can "strip off" characters from the left and right ends of a string of text. For example, =Left("Troy",2) would give you "Tr" and =Right("Troy",1) would give you "y".

Left Function

Right function

Mid Function

If there is a left and right function, you know in your heart there has to be a middle! The format of the MID function is: =(MID,Cell Address,starting with,how many)
In this example, =mid("University",4,3) you would begin with the 4th character from the left (the "v") and capture 3 characters (the "ver").

Using the MID function on Text

Using the MID function on numbers

It is relatively easy to see that you have the power to look at the contents of a cell and disect it with some combination of the Len, Left, Right, or Mid functions. There's more you can do. You can add two cells together to make a new cell.

Concatenate Text
Concatenate is a long name that basically you can take two strings of text characters and join them end to end. (Troy + State = TroyState) The process is fairly simple. You just have to remember to use the & key.

Comments:

In the first example, tombill is accomplished by joining A2 and B2 In the second example, A2 is joined with a blank space and that is joined with B2

The third example is like the first, only the order of the joining is different. The last example used the concatenate function. This lets you join the elements in order if you separate them with commas.

A good question to ask is when might you ever use the concatenate or & in real life? The most common place I have used the & to join two cells has been when someone has carefully planned ahead and split names into two parts to facilitate creating an alphabetized listing. But later they still needed the full names in separate cells.
If there was a need for a column of full names, you certainly wouldn't want to copy all of the names again! You simply concatenate the top two cells with =a2 & b2 and copy this formula down with a fill-down. Certainly saves typing and having to correct typing erors (see!)

Repeat
The repeat function is a quick way to request Excel to repeat a string of text a number of times. The format for the function is: =REPT(Text, # of times to repeat)

The examples above pretty much tell the story of the repeat function. The more interesting part is in deciding how to take advantage of the features in any meaningful way. Let's take a look at some examples of how you might use all of the Text Functions we have explored. Suppose you wanted to build your own Bar Graph rather than use the graphic capabilities of Excel.

The Repeat Function added to the Concatenate process lets you create a nice horizontal graph. If you add text color, you can have an interesting graph and never use the power of Excel's graphing wizard.

This next example requires a little setup story. In preparation for some other work, you have to know if the data entry person has accidentally added a space bar character at the end of any of the names in a long list. Since the spacebar character is not visible, you will have some difficulty checking without some help from Excel. There are always more than one way to solve a problem. Take a look at these three methods...some we think are better than others.

The Length function is OK. You basically have to scroll down the list and see if the number of letters in each name in Column B matches the value in Column C. Not too bad, but counting will slow you down. The combination of the Left and Len functions will probably be easier to "eye-ball" the column. The process basically will display all but the last character entered. We think it would be easier to see where two cells match than counting characters in a name. The third solution seems (to us) to be the best. We use the Right function to display the "right-most" character. It is pretty easy to spot a blank cell as you look down the column. By any of the methods, you can monitor the typing and quickly edit the cells having the unwanted blank space. Return

The Count Functions

Excel offers more than one count function and each is very useful. Basically, you can count the number of cells in a range that are empty and not empty. You can count "conditionally". We shall look at these counting ideas and try to illustrate their usefulness. In this example, a record is kept of who has completed some task. X's are placed beside the names of the people completing the task. How many are missing something? The Countblank function will scan the range of cells and return the number of cells that are blank...the number missing. Not a big deal with only 6 people, but suppose the list was much larger, like 376!

The Count function will look at a range of cells and return the number of cells containing a number. Perhaps someone wants to know the number of makeup tests that will have to be given. Again, no big deal with a class of 6...but what about a larger list?

The CountA function will work across a range of cells and check for cells that contain ANY type of data. This is slightly different from the Count function which looks at ranges of cells containing numbers.

The Conditional counting function is most useful. The format is to specify the range and then specify the condition or relationship to count. A medium size school might want to count the number of students in danger of flunking using the Countif function.

Return

Random Number
Excel uses the random number generator of most computers to generate numbers randomly from the range of numbers 0-1. This means Excel might generate a number like .4534582 or .0274924 but not 38 or -2. Each number generated must fall between 0 and 1. If you need random numbers outside this range, you have to perform a little arithmetic on it first. The format for the random number function is:

=RAND()

This function does all that is necessary to produce numbers at random. We shall look at some arithmetic processes you could use to get random numbers from your range. We will look at the process of getting a random number from the range of 1 - 10 as an example of how to modify the rand function. Steps 1 2 - Multiply by 10 3 - Apply INT function Function =RAND() =10*RAND() =INT(10*RAND()) Results #1 .0345739 0.345739 0 Results #2 .3829847 3.829847 3

(Note the INT function returns the Greatest Integer Less than the argument) INT(3.48574) = 3 and INT(1.5683) = 1 and INT(.05935) = 0 4 - Add 1 Discussion Step 1 simply introduces the random number function and we see two possible results so you can follow what might happen in each case. Step 2 multiplies the random number by 10, the largest value in the range 1 - 10. This could produce values as small as .000001 or as large as 9.9999. Step 3 computes the greatest integer less than the actual value. In this case we get the 0 and 3. Step 4 adds 1 to the results from step 3 to insure that the output is a number at random from 1 - 10 which was the goal of the process. =INT(10*RAND())+1 1 4

In general, the process for finding a random number 1 through N would be to evaluate =INT(N * RAND()) + 1 Desired Range Random Number Function

1-6 1 - 100
So what!

=INT(6 * RAND()) + 1 =INT(100 * RAND()) + 1

Why would anybody ever want to use the Random Number Function? Great question. The best answer is ... Most Don't! For the occasions that you do, you are quite pleased to have a program like Excel to let you generate numbers at random. One example of where such a need arises is in the world of probability. You are often called upon to model or simulate real world events with a mathematical equivalent. Take the event of rolling a pair of dice. Each die is a cube with 6 faces having 1 to 6 dots. In a fair roll, each of these faces is equally likely to appear face up. The mathematical model for this would be a random number from the range of 1 - 6. A pair of dice would be two random numbers. The dice roll is the sum of the number of dots that are face up on the two cubes.

This is an example of a mathematical model of rolling 10 pairs of dice. Column D displays the total of the dice roll. The formulas in Columns B and C are identical: =INT(6 * RAND())+1 The formula in Column D indicates Excel should add the two values in Columns B and C respectively. The Function Key F9 will cause a re-calculation of all formulas and functions on the spreadsheet. In this way you could see the results of another set of 10 dice rolls. In a study of probability, you are interested in the frequency of the occurrence of an event. In this case, we will look at the frequency of "rolling" each of the possible values 2 - 12. We simply add a section to this piece of work to count what is happening across the 10 simulated rolls of the dice.

Column F contains the list of possible Dice Rolls. Of interest is the formulas/functions in Columns G and H. Let's see how these cells get there. We use the Countif function from the Counting Functions category in Column G. We ask Excel to count the number of occurrences of 2 in the range of cells from F2 to Fll with the function: =COUNTIF(F2:F11,"=2") and the function calls for Excel to look in Column F from Cell F2 to Cell F11 and total the number of cells having a value equal to 2. In this example, we find the number of 2's is zero. That result is displayed in G2. A similar function is placed below referencing F2 through F11 with the conditions "=3", "=4", "=5", ... , "=12". This gives us a count of how many times each of the rolls came up at random in 10 simulated dice rolls. Column H makes use of the Repeat function. The asterisk (*) is repeated as many times as the frequency count in Column G. This function is found in each of the cells in Column G

=REPT("*",G2) for the graph of the Frequency of 2. This function is copied to the cells below producing the expected =REPT("*",G3) and so forth down to =REPT("*",G12). That's how you get a string of ***'s representing the frequency of rolling each of the values 2-12 when you take 10 rolls of the dice. In the world of probability, 10 measurements is a little small. Suppose we increased the number of dice rolls to 100. The Excel work is identical.

The end of range has to be changed in each of the cells in Column G to reflect the last cell for the 100th simulated dice roll. Who would want to roll a pair of dice 100 times and keep up with what happens when you could just as easily make Excel do it. Think how easy it is (press F9) to do the entire experiment over again! Return

Mathematics & Trig Functions

Excel provides many, many functions which perform calculations after calculations. The total number of functions depends on the type of "install" you may choose. Rather than try to explain what each function will do, we will rely on the "hint" given by Excel describing the "function of each function"! You can reach the Math and Trig set of functions by using Insert + Function from the Menu. This will allow you to select the Math/Trig category of functions The left panel contains the different categories of functions. If you scroll down the categories until you highlight Math & Trig, you will bring up the different Math & Trig Functions in the right panel. Note the functions are displayed in alphabetical order to help you quickly find the particular function you are seeking. The function name selected by Excel may be a little cryptic and you could have some difficulty in guessing exactly what the function actually does. Excel provides a little hint to try to explain the "function of the function."

Once a particular function in the right panel is highlighted with a click, a hint will be displayed below the format Excel uses for that function. In this case, a function like: = abs(3.456) will return the absolute value of the number inside the parentheses.

Should you have a "typical" install of Excel, you should see each of these math/trig functions in the right pane. ABS ACOS ACOSH ASIN ASINH

ATAN COS FACT LOG10 ODD RAND SIGN SUM SUMW2PY2

ATAN2 COSH FLOOR MDETERM PI ROMANS SIN SUMIF SUMXMY2

ATANH DEGREES INT MINVERSE PRODUCT ROUND SINH SUMPRODUCT TAN

CEILING EVEN LN MMULT POWER ROUNDDOWN SQRT SUMSQ TANH

COMBINE EXP LOG MOD RADIANS ROUNDUP SUBTOTAL SUMX2MY2 TRUNC

Excel offers still more help if you need it on each function. Suppose you actually select one of these functions, say the FACT function for factorial. The Factorial function will give you the product of multiplying 1 x 2 x 3 x ... x N for the value of N that you supply.

Once you enter a value or cell reference in the wizard's field, you will see the computed value that will be displayed in the cell where the function is being placed. If you have some idea or estimate of what the answer should be, this may be of some help.

Comment: Most people's experiences in mathematics will let them understand some of the functions and not others. Basically, use the functions that have meaning to you and ignore the rest. Choose each of the functions one at a time and see if the "hint" makes any sense. (You might want to take a Math class to extend your background and more of these functions will have meaning!) Return

Statistics
Excel has many, many statistical functions from which to choose. Should you need to pull from simple descriptive or the more advanced inferential set of calculations, Excel is there to provide relief from tedious calculations and formulas. Let's follow along as we analyze some data with the help of Excel's statistical set for functions. We start with a typical table of data. We have 10 pairs of scores and we wish to find the correlation coefficient. We seek the value called Pearson's R.

We locate the active cell where we wish the value to be displayed on our spreadsheet and call the functions from the Menu with Insert + Function. Excel stores its collection of statistical support as functions.

We click on Insert and highlight the Function choice.

This will bring up the Function panel for us to make our selection.

The left window contains the categories of functions and the right window displays the functions in that category. We scroll down the left window to Statistical and then scroll down the different statistical functions to Pearson.

Note the text hint that appears when you select a specific function in the right window.

Move the panel to the side so you can see your data. The cell addresses of the two columns of data are entered to tell Excel where to find your pairs of numbers. When you are satisfied you have the correct information, click OK. The anticipated results are entered in the correct cell! Comment: Many of your statistical needs can be met with the collection of functions in the statistics category. Note that Excel does not ask if you "really want this function". The expectation is that you know which analysis is appropriate. You have only to pick from a list.

If there is a statistical analysis that you need and you have the correct formulas, you can enter them in your spreadsheet and let Excel do the calculations for you. Return

12. Database Features * Filters * Sorting Find Mail Merge - Labels Filters with Excel Return | See a Movie of the Process One of the most important tasks in database queries is the request to show some records and hide the others. This let's you see subsets of the total when these subcollections are identified by criteria you specify. While Excel does not have the full array of selection and display features of powerful database programs, it can handle many tasks very well. Let's look at a table of data and explore the filter process on that table.

We begin by selecting a column. We will start with Column C. We anticipate the need to separate the "men from the women" for some task.

W e f i r s t c l i c k o n C o l umn C to select all of the entries in that cell. Then we click on Data in the Menu and highlight the Filter choice. We follow the right arrow and select the AutoFilter choice circled above.

This combination of choices will bring out the Filters box and place it on the cell containing the column heading. Note the down-arrow indicating there are choices to be made.

Select the F choice

The Filter will display all of the rows where Sex = F. Note the numbering scheme in Column A is not dynamic...these are the original

values that were in the cells of Column A.

Select the M choice

The Filter will display all of the rows where Sex = M.

In a similar manner, you could set a Filter on the Grade column and easily select all students in a particular class.

We now turn our attention to additional filters you can use. This process offers some very powerful Database query techniques and may be sufficient for many database uses without having to migrate to a full database program.

Note that we have removed the Filter in Column C and added one in Column F under the Scores column. So far, the search criteria has been using the "equals" relationship. We will explore the possibilities of filtering on other relationships.

Select Custom.

The Custom AutoFilter Panel will appear. Note the down-arrow.

You may select from several differentrelationships for a filter. Highlight the relationship of choice and click OK to select it.

This lets you specify a custom criteria. In this case, we are asking to show only rows having aScore >= 90 Note the And/Or choice. This means you could combine two custom relationships with a filter like: >= 70 and <=90.

This would be the result of applying the Custom Filter of Score Greater Than or Equal to 90

Sorting in Excel
Database features should allow you to have some control over the arrangement of your data. Excel has a very powerful sorting feature which comes in handy many, many times. It is well worth learning how to sort to let you have more control over your own data.

Let's use this short table of grades for a collection of students. You might wish to rearrange the students and display them alphabetically.
Be careful!!! Alan will move to the top of the list, but what about Alan's grades? You want to sort not only the names, but also have the grades follow the sort process too!

It's fairly easy to be sure you select the columns beside the column you wish to sort--just select all of the columns BEFORE you begin the sort process. (Jan might like to get a better deal)

Start by clicking on Cell A1 and dragging to Cell E10. This will highlight all of the cells in your data table. You might note that the first cell you selected is setoff from the others by remaining white. Once you have selected your table, you select Sort from the Menu by clicking on Data and highlighting the Sort option from the dropdown collection of choices.

Take note of some of the other choices. We will be using some of them in other ways.

The Sort Panel is displayed with several default settings already picked for you. You may elect to keep these settings as displayed and click OK. You may elect to change some of these settings to reflect the kind of sorting you wish on your data.

It would be useful to comment on some of the choices you have in this panel.

The downarrow to the right of the Names let's you view the other column headings in your table of data. If a particular table has no column headings, the choices will be by Column (Column A, Column B, etc.) Highlight your choice and select with a click. The radio buttons suggest Ascending. Click in Descending if that is your choice. Comment: Ascending or descending has different meanings depending on the contents of your data table. Ascending text is ordered from A - Z while ascending dates are ordered from earliest to most recent. It depends on the cell format for your data.

Original Table of Data Table of Data after a Sort on Names Excel supports nested or internal sorts up to three levels. We need to investigate what this means so you can choose when these "extra" sorts will be helpful. Suppose you would like to sort the table of data on one of the disciplines, say Art. What would you like for Excel to do when two or more people make the same grade in Art? That is, how do you want the order of the names to be displayed? In this example, we will first select the block of cells that represents our table.

Then we will choose to sort on the discipline of Art and we want Art sorted in Ascending order.

In the event there are "ties" in Art grades, we will display the rows of ties using the Names also in Ascending order.

Let's review the results of this sort to see if the logic of these requests make sense when you look at the result.

In this example, there were 3 A's in Art and the rows are arranged in alphabetical order by the Names column. Note that Fred, Judith, Mike and Peter each made a B and these are grouped alphabetically. Finally, Jan and Jim are sortedalphabetically and they both made a C in Art.

Sorting your data on the column of choice is a most useful feature in giving you the power to display your data in one of many different arrangements that would suit your purposes. Return | See a Movie of the Process

Find
Database features generally let you have different ways to look at your information. This could be looking at different arrangements, subsets of the whole, or just a single entry. The FIND command lets you quickly locate instances of text you enter anywhere in your Excel table. One of the easiest ways to lookup something in a cell in your spreadsheet is to use the Find command. You may access this command from the Menu with Edit + Find or if you are into using the Keyboard Shortcuts,CNTL + F.

The Find Panel pops up letting you enter some text. In this case, we have entered the letters "Ji". If you look at the list of names on the left you should be able to find the first instance of the letters J + i in the list of names. When you have completed the entry in the Find What field, click on the Find Next button.

Note the active cell is Cell A2 which contains the letters Ji. Look carefully at the list of names and predict which cell will be the active cell when the Find Next button is clicked.

The active cell changes to Cell A6 which is the next occurance of the letters J+i. You may continue moving through your database finding all instances of the two letters J + i. There is a choice to check the Match case square. This is referring to matching by upper case and lower case. If Match case is checked, then "Jim" is not the

same as "jim" and if you entered "ji" as a find criteria, you would not find Jim or Jill. Without Match case checked, you would find the same cells using "Ji", "JI", or "ji". You might not there is a Replace button under the Find Next and Close buttons. Not only can you find instances of text, you have powerful replacement options at your discretion. You may choose either the Replace or Replace All by clicking on the button of choice. Logically, you would enter on the Replace with line the text that should replace the text on the Find What field. A note of caution here....when you choose Replace All, you may have unexpected replacements happen.

Suppose you wish to change all of the dates in a spreadsheet from 2000 to 2003. What do you think will happen to a cell containing a value like 320005? It will be changed to 320035! Be careful in using the replace features. Return

Mail Merge - Labels

Microsoft Office offers several ways to merge data from one document into another. We prefer to use Excel over Word. The process is very similar regardless of the choice of document to hold the data needed to be merged. We will produce mailing labels from an Excel document to demonstrate the process. Fortunately, there is a merge wizard to guide us through the process with ease. The first thing to do is to develop a table in Excel that contains the information you will need for creating your labels.

In this example, we have the names (in two columns), the street addresses, and the City-State-Zip in separate columns. This is perhaps the reason we like Excel over other applications to use for merging. Suppose you had enough labels to warrant sorting by zip code. That's a snap in Excel. There might be other categories in your data table which could be used to sort; say state then city. By using the power of Excel's sorting capability and the filtering process, you could customize your final listing and still keep the table intact for other uses. This may improve your efficiency in actually applying labels on the envelopes and eliminate sorting of envelopes! Cautions

1. 2.

You need to put your data table on Sheet 1 of the Excel book. You need to put your column headings on row 1 of your spreadsheet.

These two items are most important. The merging won't work if you have started your table on row 2 (See the example below.) or you put your table on Sheet 2.

Your Excel document containing your Data Table is saved on your Hard Drive in a location you will remember. (You will have to navigate to its location later.) Now you should open Microsoft Word. There is a slight difference in exactly what you do next depending on the version of Word you are using. Word 2002 and Word 2000 locate the Mail Merge feature in different places. For purposes of this tutorial, we will use Word 2000. (The processes are very similar with other versions of Word.) Now we will select the Mail Merge from

the Tools menu item.

When you select the Mail Merge option, you will see the Mail Merge Wizard to help you through the process. Microsoft was very nice in anticipating that you might need help even withonly 3 steps!

Follow along as we execute these three steps. The wizard suggest we start by clicking on the Create button.

The Mail Merge Helper will guide you through the process. The text at thetop of the panelsuggests what to do next. Also note, the other button choices are not available...making it difficult to make a mistake.

Select Mailing Labels from the collection of choices.

We recommend you choose aNew Main Document as you will save the final product when you finish.

Navigate to the location of your Excel file...

...and select Open.

This is where youidentify the source of the data to the Wizard. You do remember where you have the Excel file with your Table Data?

Select theEntire Spreadsheeteven if you won't be using all of the columns in your Excel document.

We are not exactly clear why this question comes up since there is only one choice!?!

This Label Panel lets you indicate the size of the labels you plan to use. The selection system usesAvery's number system since that is quite popular with labels. When you are satisfied, clickOK to begin the Merge to fit the label selected. Note the size of the label is also displayed when you select a Product Number.

This Panel lets you indicate which text fieldgoes where from your Excel document. The Sample Label field is a large view of the actual label. You will position the content on the label in this label field. There is no left and right margin. We generally create a left margin withseveral spacebars.

Indicate whichspecific columns the merge process should use to pull data to produce your labels. Select them one at a time.

Note several label formatting marks. The red lines indicate spacing you create with theEnter key and severalSpacebar hits. This spacing moves your text down on the label and creates a small left margin.

Also note the space between FName and LName. The ",space" is needed as is the space between State and Zip.

The Merge Wizard indicates that you have done all that you need to do to merge the Excel document into mailing labels. Simply click on the Merge button and you are on your way!

We recommend merging to a new document. Note that if you have blank cells in your Data Table, the "blanks" are not printed.

The final result will be a single page or a series of pages containing your Excel Table Data in "labels" the size you specified on a new word processing document. Simply insert your paper with labels in the printer and select Print.

Note the top and left margins that were created by the Enter Key and the Spacebar hits. You may wish to change the font or size. Choose the Select All and select the choices you prefer. You may also apply style and color to your text. We recommend you SAVE your document BEFORE printing. If something should go wrong during the printing and you have to reboot your computer, you won't have to rebuild the mail merge again. Also, you might want to print this set of labels again in the future and you would already have it set up for printing. Return

13. Printing in Excel Setting Gridlines, Margins, Orientation Inserting/Deleting Page breaks Print Preview * Setting/Removing Print Area Printing Column Headings in a Report Printing Settings Excel's printing is identical to the printing of documents from other applications in the Office suite. If you are already familiar with printing from any of these applications, you are almost finished with the print features of Excel. Like all printing components, Excel has its set of "default" settings. That is, when you first open a blank spreadsheet and eventually choose to print, there are already some settings that you may expect to be set for you. It is important to have an understanding of these defaults because you might just like the defaults and won't need to make any adjustments! The menu choice of Page Setup will let you make adjustments in the default setup of the document for printing purposes. Click on File in the Menu and slide down to highlight Page Setup. When you get the choice you want, click to select.

This will bring up the Page Setup Panel to let you begin making any adjustments to the settings.

T h e P a g e S e t u p

Panel contains four different panels accessed by clicking on the appropriate tab. In this view, the Page Tab is open. You can change the Orientation of the document from Portrait to Landscape. The Scaling lets you adjust the number of pages required to contain your document. More on this later.

When you are satisfied with the settings on the Page Tab, you could clickOK or click on another Tab.

The Margins tab lets you make adjustments to the way the printer is going to try to print your document. Note the default settings for the top, bottom, left and right margins. You may want to adjust these at some time. If you have a small document that you want centered, you might try using the Center on Page features to get either horizontal or vertical centering (or both). This would be quicker than trying to adjust the margins or editing your document!

You could click OK or select another Page Setup Tab.

The Header/Footer tab lets you see the place where you can create Headers and Footers. Headers and Footers are content you wishrepeated on each page of your printout. A header or footer that might prove useful would be a place to display page numbers for your set of documents. Remember that headers and footers will take up space on your paper and you should plan accordingly. If you are finished, you could Click OK or select another Tab.

The final tab is the Sheet Tab. This tab contains some important features.

The Sheet Tab is the place where you tell Excel whether you want to print gridlines or not. Notice the blank box beside Gridlines. This is the default setting. If you want to display the horizontal and vertical borders of the cells, you will have to put a check in the gridlines box. We shall use the Print Preview option (discussed in another section)to see what a document might look like if the gridlines have not been turned on.

You can see from this example that the content of the page has not had the gridlines turned on. It might be interesting to also observe that the Next button in the top corner is dark. This would mean that the document will print using more than one page. More about the Print Preview feature in another session.

If you close the Print Preview window, you will return to your document and see some dotted vertical and horizontal lines. These are visual clues that with the current settings, the page breaks in actual printed pages will fall on the dotted lines. The breaks may be OK or cause you to try to adjust something. We will now explore how you might get all of your work on a single printed page. You have some choices besides adjusting the column widths and reducing the font size down for all text. You remember the margin settings? Perhaps you could achieve the desired results if you let your document take up more space horizontally on the paper. This adjustment from the default setting of .75 inch to .25 would add a half-inch to your document on both sides. You could look at the dotted lines or try the Print Preview again. If the document is still too wide, you have other settings to adjust. You could change the paper orientation from Portrait to Landscape. This would give you several extra inches on the left and right margins. It could cause a problem with the top and bottom margins.

Perhaps the easiest way to make sure all of your document fits on one page is using the Scaling feature found on the Page Tab. If your document "laps over" the edge of a single page, the Fit to 1 page will "scrunch" everything smaller until it fits on a single page. Caution: This could make everything so small it couldn't be read! If you choose to use this feature, we strongly suggest you check the output to see if it will still be useful. Generally, this feature works best when just a small amount of "scruch" will put everything on a page. (If all fails, resign yourself that you have a 2-page document!) Return Page Breaks in Excel There are often "better" places to stop printing on a page than others. If you have a multi-page document with headings for different sections, why let the printer print the heading for a section at the bottom of one page and the section on the following? You have some control over where Excel will break for a new page in printing. You have much more control than you think you will.

Consider this a typical gradebook project and the instructor wants to print only the names and final grade. The Names column was copied to Column F, and the task is to get Excel to break the printing on the red line. The first thing to do is to select the column where you want the page to break. This is easily

accomplished by clicking on the letter F above cell F1.

Then you will insert a page break using the Menu and Insert + Page Break. Excel will put a vertical dotted line indicating the printing will break pages around the line.

Breaking pages in a horizontal fashion has to be similar to breaking vertically. First select the row where you want the page to break. This is accomplished by clicking on the row number (in this case 7). Once you have selected the correct row, you would

use the Menu and choose Insert + Page Break. This will tell Excel to create a horizontal break which will be indicated to you with a horizontal dotted line.

If you can INSERT a page break, you should be able to change your mind. You might think the location of the remove Page Break is located under Edit, but it isn't! First select a cell adjacent to the page break line. Then you would Insert a Remove Page Break. Select Insert + Remove Page Break and the break you introduced will be removed. Simple!

Return

Print Preview
The Print Preview is probably the best printing feature in Excel. You can get a "bird's eye-view" of your document in a flash. This is usually sufficient to tell you what, if any, adjusting you may need to do to make your document look right...and you save trees too! The button for selecting Print Preview is located on the Toolbar. If you hover your mouse over the button, you will see the tooltip for Print Preview.

When this button is selected, the screen will display your document from "40-50" feet away. You get an "overview" look at what the document will look like when printed.

You have several buttons in the Print Preview screen to let you make adjustments to the view.

Since theNe xt butto nis graye d out, there are no more pages .

ThePreviousb utton would be used when you have moved into your document several pages and you wish to go back to an earlier page.

The Zoomb utton would let you view the document in the "normal" mode.

ThePrintbu tton lets you begin actual printing if you are satisfied with the Preview.

The Setupb utton will let you go immediately to the Page Setup Panels.

The Marginsb utton would let you adjust the margins from the Print Preview Panel.

The Page Break Previewd oes just that...lets you check the page breaks in your document and make

The Closeb utton will return you to the spreadsheet .

changes. Remember to use the Print Preview to see what your document will look like rather than print a "test" copy. Return

Print Area
Return | See a Movie of the Process There are occasions when it may be strategic to print a block of your spreadsheet project without printing the entire project. This need could be a temporary need or a permanent part of your overall plan. Excel lets you identify a block of the spreadsheet and print just that part if you so desire. Pretend for a minute that the large red rectangle represents your entire spreadsheet project. The blue area inside represents a portion of the large project you wish to print. Excel let's to have a "printing area" inside your project if you need it. The printing margins, orientation, etc. for printing will be applied to the cells in the Print Area just as you would expect. Adjustments in the print setup will be applied to the content you actually print.

The first thing to do is to indentify what block of cells you wish to print. You select this block by clicking and dragging. The cells will be highlighted to indicate they are selected. For purposes of this discussion, we will get Excel to print this area of our project.

The actual process to a real print area would be the same.

Once you have correctly selected all of the cells you wish to print, you would click on File and drag your mouse down to Print Area. You follow the right-arrow to select Set Print Area. The block of cells youinitially selected will be blocked off by Excel. The next time you attempt to print, this block will be the content of the printed document. This means make your initial selection carefully.

We can look at what would be printed using the Print Preview of Excel.

From this preview, you can tell the gridlines have not been turned on. Also you can easily see that the text alignment of the cells in the Print Area is preserved. A "neater" printout will require some cell alignment adjustments.

There has to be a way to correct your mistake of selecting the wrong initial block of cells or to remove the Print Area if you have finished printing and wish to print another area or the entire document. Simply click on File + Print Area and follow the right-arrow to Clear Print Area. That's all there is to printing portions (blocks of cells) of your project!

Return | See a Movie of the Process

How to Print Column Headings in Excel

Recently I have been asked a similar question from several independent users of Excel. It seems they have a long document that will exceed one page when printed. The column headings that make the printed information make sense on the first page need to be repeated on the second, third, and subsequent pages. If the data is "static", the column headings can be copied and pasted to the proper rows with no trouble. But what happens if the data is "dynamic"? The questions received came from people with a dynamic table. The energy and effort to copy/paste every time the rows changed make the copy/paste process inefficient at best. Fortunately, Excel has just the thing for this situation. (This tutorial uses Excel 2003. Other versions may have slightly different procedures.) For purposes of this exercise, imagine a "lengthy" listing of contacts with the following column headings. Again imagine the user wishes to have the same column headings printed on subsequent pages.

The first thing to do is to create the entire document and then tell Excel what you want it to do for you when you print. Check out the File + Page Setup feature.

Depending on the last previous use of this feature, you may revert to the following dialog wizard. This may be the panel you want. If not, click on the Sheet Tab to open the proper wizard.

Now you are ready to begin. Simply enter the beginning and ending row(s) you want repeated. In the example below, the request is to repeat row 1. Note that a $1:$3 would repeat the first three rows. You could have a "heading" you wish displayed on the first page and then repeat the columns headings on all subsequent pages. Simply enter the beginning row and ending row and you should see the requested row repeated. The column headings do not have to be in row 1all the time.

The "proof" of the process is illustrated in the following Print Preview screens. Screen 1

Screen 1 displays the column headings. Selecting Next will display the second screen.

In this example, the total listing would require only two pages. The Previous button is highlighted to indicate the document is finished. Note the column headings will appear above the appropriate columns. That was fairly easy!

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