Excel
Advanced Charts & Graph in Excel
Graphics, images, and charts are great ways to visualize and represent the data, and Excel does...
In this Microsoft Excel tutorial, we will learn the Microsoft Exel basics. These Microsoft Excel notes will help you learn every MS Excel concepts. Let's start with the introduction:
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program used to record and analyze numerical and statistical data. Microsoft Excel provides multiple features to perform various operations like calculations, pivot tables, graph tools, macro programming, etc. It is compatible with multiple OS like Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.
A Excel spreadsheet can be understood as a collection of columns and rows that form a table. Alphabetical letters are usually assigned to columns, and numbers are usually assigned to rows. The point where a column and a row meet is called a cell. The address of a cell is given by the letter representing the column and the number representing a row.
We all deal with numbers in one way or the other. We all have daily expenses which we pay for from the monthly income that we earn. For one to spend wisely, they will need to know their income vs. expenditure. Microsoft Excel comes in handy when we want to record, analyze and store such numeric data. Let's illustrate this using the following image.
There are number of ways in which you can get Microsoft Excel. You can buy it from a hardware computer shop that also sells software. Microsoft Excel is part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs. Alternatively, you can download it from the Microsoft website but you will have to buy the license key.
In this Microsoft Excel tutorial, we are going to cover the following topics about MS Excel.
Running Excel is not different from running any other Windows program. If you are running Windows with a GUI like (Windows XP, Vista, and 7) follow the following steps.
Alternatively, you can also open it from the start menu if it has been added there. You can also open it from the desktop shortcut if you have created one.
For this tutorial, we will be working with Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Excel 2013. Follow the following steps to run Excel on Windows 8.1
The following image shows you how to do this
The ribbon provides shortcuts to commands in Excel. A command is an action that the user performs. An example of a command is creating a new document, printing a documenting, etc. The image below shows the ribbon used in Excel 2013.
Ribbon start button - it is used to access commands i.e. creating new documents, saving existing work, printing, accessing the options for customizing Excel, etc.
Ribbon tabs – the tabs are used to group similar commands together. The home tab is used for basic commands such as formatting the data to make it more presentable, sorting and finding specific data within the spreadsheet.
Ribbon bar – the bars are used to group similar commands together. As an example, the Alignment ribbon bar is used to group all the commands that are used to align data together.
A worksheet is a collection of rows and columns. When a row and a column meet, they form a cell. Cells are used to record data. Each cell is uniquely identified using a cell address. Columns are usually labelled with letters while rows are usually numbers.
A workbook is a collection of worksheets. By default, a workbook has three cells in Excel. You can delete or add more sheets to suit your requirements. By default, the sheets are named Sheet1, Sheet2 and so on and so forth. You can rename the sheet names to more meaningful names i.e. Daily Expenses, Monthly Budget, etc.
Personally I like the black colour, so my excel theme looks blackish. Your favourite colour could be blue, and you too can make your theme colour look blue-like. If you are not a programmer, you may not want to include ribbon tabs i.e. developer. All this is made possible via customizations. In this sub-section, we are going to look at;
The above image shows the default ribbon in Excel 2013. Let's start with customization the ribbon, suppose you do not wish to see some of the tabs on the ribbon, or you would like to add some tabs that are missing such as the developer tab. You can use the options window to achieve this.
Your ribbon will look as follows
You can also add your own tab, give it a custom name and assign commands to it. Let's add a tab to the ribbon with the text Guru99
Your ribbon will look as follows
To set the color-theme for your Excel sheet you have to go to Excel ribbon, and click on à File àOption command. It will open a window where you have to follow the following steps.
This option allows you to define how Excel behaves when you are working with formulas. You can use it to set options i.e. autocomplete when entering formulas, change the cell referencing style and use numbers for both columns and rows and other options.
If you want to activate an option, click on its check box. If you want to deactivate an option, remove the mark from the checkbox. You can this option from the Options dialogue window under formulas tab from the left-hand side panel
This option manipulates the entered text entered into excel. It allows setting options such as the dictionary language that should be used when checking for wrong spellings, suggestions from the dictionary, etc. You can this option from the options dialogue window under the proofing tab from the left-hand side panel
This option allows you to define the default file format when saving files, enable auto recovery in case your computer goes off before you could save your work, etc. You can use this option from the Options dialogue window under save tab from the left-hand side panel
Ctrl + P | used to open the print dialogue window |
Ctrl + N | creates a new workbook |
Ctrl + S | saves the current workbook |
Ctrl + C | copy contents of current select |
Ctrl + V | paste data from the clipboard |
SHIFT + F3 | displays the function insert dialog window |
SHIFT + F11 | Creates a new worksheet |
F2 | Check formula and cell range covered |
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