Introduction To Spreadsheets Using Microsoft Excel by Professor Andrew H. Andersen, Jr. Brookdale Community College Copyright © 1999 - 2005ELEC 103 - Charting and Graphing Data with Excel MICROSOFT EXCEL Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet application that you can use for charting, managing, and analyzing data. It may be purchased as a single application, or as part of Microsoft Office. Let us define a few abbreviations for mouse operations that are used in this document. CL Click the Left mouse button. DCL Double Click the Left mouse button rapidly. HL Hold the Left mouse button CR Click the Right mouse button MICROSOFT EXCEL SPREADSHEET When Excel has been installed on your computer, you will find the Microsoft Excel in the Windows Program Manager. To run this application, ♦ CL on the Start button on the Task Bar. ♦ Move the mouse up to Programs f and a menu appears on the right ♦ Move the mouse over Microsoft Excel and CL. The worksheet edit screen appears on the display. The worksheet is a document that contains a series of cells, and each cell is capable of holding text, numeric values, dates, or formulas that can be used to perform calculations based on data in other cells. Each cell has a unique address. The address consists of a column letter and row number. Look at Figure 1 and locate the mouse pointer which is a large plus sign. The mouse pointer is currently located in Column C Row 3. The address of this cell is C3. The address of all other cells is FIGURE 1ELEC 103 - Charting and Graphing Data with Excel found in a similar manner. All Windows displays contain similar elements, and Excel is no exception. The Excel display of Figure 1 contains sections that we will now define: 1. Title Bar − Displays the name of the program and the title of the current worksheet. If the worksheet has never been saved, Excel will use the name Book1. 2. Menu Bar − contains a list of drop down menus. When you click on a menu selection, it opens to provide a selection of commands that allows you to select the operation that you wish to perform. 3. Standard Toolbar − Buttons with Icons that you may use with your mouse to issue commands in place of using the Menu Bar. 4. Formatting Toolbar − allows you to rapidly format (change the appearance of) your text. 5. Formula bar − The area of the Excel Worksheet that is used to enter or edit values or formulas in cells and charts. 6. Insertion point − (IP) a blinking vertical line in a text box that shows where text will be entered or deleted when you press the appropriate key. 7. Column − a vertical set of cells. Each column is represented by a letter or pair of letters. 8. Rows − a horizontal set of cells. Each row is represented by a number. 9. Active Cell − an area in the worksheet identified by a label representing the intersection of a column and row. It may contain text, numbers, or a formula. The Active Cell is also displayed in the Cell Reference Box located on the left side of the Formula Bar. 10. Mouse pointer − There are different mouse pointers that change as you move about the display. Some of the different mouse pointers are: ♦ A hollow + selects cells in the worksheet. ♦ A M On menus or toolbars selects a command or a button or scrolls if used on a scrollbar. ♦ An I−beam in a text box or cell shows the new location where text will be inserted. 11. Scroll bar − There are separate horizontal and vertical scroll bars. They allow us to move horizontally or vertically through our worksheet. 12. Worksheet Arrows − Arrows that scroll through the Worksheet Tabs. 13. Worksheet Tab − The tabs located at the bottom of a workbook window. When you click a sheet tab, that sheet becomes the active sheet. To add more sheets to a selection, hold down the CTRL key as you click the sheet tabs. To extend a selection, click a sheet tab, hold down the SHIFT key and click another sheet tab. All the sheets between the two sheets will be selected. To end a group selection, click on a tab that is not part of the group, or use the Ungroup Sheets command on the sheet tab shortcut menu. From the Tools Options General dialog box, set the default number of Sheets in a new Workbook. 14. Status Bar − gives us status information about our worksheet. THE STANDARD TOOLBAR Excel has options that make many of your routine tasks as easy a pressing a button on the Toolbar. If you forget what operation a Button performs, place the pointer over the Button for a few seconds. The button name will be displayed at the tail of the arrow, and a description of the function or operation is displayed at the bottom left corner of the Status Bar. The Standard Toolbar can be seen in Figure 2. The meaning of the Buttons on the Standard Toolbar are:ELEC 103 - Charting and Graphing Data with Excel 1. Create a New File. 2. Open an Existing File. 3. Save the Current File. 4. Print the active document according to the current page setup and print settings. 5. Print preview 6. Run the Spell Checker. 7. Cut the Highlighted Material (Remove and place in the Clipboard) 8. Copy the Highlighted Material (place in the Clipboard and leave in the document) 9. Paste (place the contents of the Clipboard in the cells at the current location). 10. Use the Mouse to apply the copied format to another object. 11. Undo (this may not always be possible). 12. Redo (this may not always be possible). 13. Insert Hyperlink 14. Web Toolbar 15. Autosum 16. Function Wizard 17. Sort cells in ascending order. 18. Sort cells in descending order. 19 Run the Chart Wizard 20. Map 21. Switch to the drawing editor 22. Zoom Control 23. Get Help on selected topic. THE FORMATTING TOOLBAR The Formatting Toolbar allows us to perform formatting operations very rapidly. These operations may also be performed from the Format menu, or by clicking the right mouse button or selecting Font or Paragraph from the menu. The functions of the buttons on the Formatting Toolbar are: 1 Displays the name of the current font. 2 Displays the size of the current font. 72 points = 1 inch. 3 B − Boldface the selected text. FIGURE 2 FIGURE 3ELEC 103 - Charting and Graphing Data with Excel 4 I − Italics applied to the selected text. 5 U − Underline the selected text. 6 Left justification of the selected paragraph 7 Center justification of the selected paragraph. 8 Right justification of the selected paragraph. 9 Center text