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Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application for Windows and Mac. Its features include powerful calculation tools and graphing capabilities. It has been the most widely used spreadsheet application since 1993.
Over the years Excel has become an integral part of the accounting functions of many businesses, but can used be anyone who needs to organise data or figures effectively. It provides an easy and effective way to format and manage data, giving the user the ability to create a chart or graph with ease. Understanding and being able to use Excel is now a basic necessity for many companies.
Excel can seem complicated and intimidating at first. The aim of the tutorial that follows is to guide you through the basics. You can follow each stage step by step, or dip in to particular sections to learn a specific tool.
For a really comprehensive coverage of Excel we’d recommend attending one of our instructor-led training courses which are delivered by experienced industry professionals.
The courses available include:
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Excel Training on May 1st, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Start off by opening up Excel 2007 by double clicking on the icon, either on your desktop or via the Programs list from the Start menu in the bottom left of your screen. All of this is covered in our Beginners Excel Course in Brighton, Sussex.
At the top of the Excel window is the title bar which will display the name of the workbook you are working on (Excel files are called Workbooks!). The default name for for a new Workbook is ” Book1″.
To the left of the Title Bar is the Quick Access Toolbar. This tool bar provides shortcuts to the most frequently selected tools. It looks like this:
If this is your first time using Excel then the bar will be set to its defaults: Save, Undo and Redo.
Undo will delete the action you have just taken and go back to what the situation was previously (useful if you make a mistake!)
Redo reverses the effects of pressing “undo” (if you decide it wasn’t a mistake after all!)
Save will initially prompt you to give your Workbook a name (something more exciting than Book 1!) and a location to save it in. After you’ve saved your Workbook for the first time, pressing “Save” again will save any updates you have made to the same file.
Located in the top left hand corner of the Excel Window is the Microsoft Office button. Click here to select from a variety of tasks from a drop-down menu including “Open”, “Save”, “Save As” etc… If you’ve worked with other Office product’s you’ll be familiar with these options.
In order to work well with Excel you have to give it the right instruction, and most of these are available on the ribbon. The ribbon is located below the Quick access toolbar across the top of the window. The ribbon is made up of lots of different tabs which display their corresponding command instructions when clicked. These tabs allow you to issue commands, access menus or access dialog boxes. There is also a “dialog box launcher” that, when clicked will offer additional commands that you may wish to use. Here is a picture of the Ribbon:
Excel Ribbon
Click image to view full size
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Excel Training on May 1st, 2009 | No Comments »
Microsoft Excel Workbooks are made up of Spreadsheets. A Spreadsheet is organised into rows and columns of cells. The columns lettered and the rows are numbered. These numbers and letters combine to give each cell an address (e.g A1). All of this is covered in our Beginners Excel Training Course in Brighton, Sussex.
The contents of each cell can be entered via the formula bar. This is divided into two parts: the left side of the formula bar shows the cell address, and the right side shows the information that the cell is holding. If you can’t see the formula bar, select the “view” tab in the top menu and click the formula button in the show/hide section.
You can also see the total, mean, maximum or minimum of any numbers or cells by highlighting them and looking at your status bar. This is located at the very bottom of your excel window. If you wish you can also change the information the status bar gives by right clicking on the status bar and choosing its options in the Customise Status Bar Menu.
Excel Status Bar
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Excel Training on May 1st, 2009 | No Comments »
Excel 2007 can create a range of graphs and charts based on data in your spreadsheet, including line, column, area, line, pie, scatter, and bar charts.
Once created, Excel graphs will automatically update to represent any changes in data that you may make.
Before we start you’ll need a set of data so that you can give Excel something to make a graph out of. Copy the data shown below, or use something similar that’s relevant to you.
Using this example, highlight cells A5 to D8, i.e. all the information in the table apart from the total sales and the title. After you have highlighted the cells, click on the insert tab at the top of the ribbon which will give you a range of graph and chart options – select “column chart”. You will now be presented with a list of column charts to choose from, select the “Clustered chart”; this is the first one in the list under the 2D section.
The following basic graph will appear containing the relevant information:
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Excel Training on May 6th, 2009 | No Comments »
The default size and position of the chart that Excel has created will not neccesarily suit your requirements.
When you select a chart in Excel 2007, handles will appear around the outline. to change the size of the chart, hover your mouse over one of these handles until your pointer turns into a multi-directional arrow. Now press and hold the left mouse button and drag to make the chart bigger or smaller.
You can also move the chart. Simply click and hold while your cursor is over a blank section of the chart and drag the chart to whatever position you prefer.
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You may want your chart to appear on its own worksheet within your workbook. To do this open the chart options ribbon by clicking on your graph. Along with the options you have already used earlier, i.e. chart styles; there is an option on the right called the “move chart location” – click on this:
You will now be asked whether you want to move the chart to another worksheet that already exists, or to a brand new chart sheet.
A worksheet is the default sheet format that Excel works from (the sheet that you are currently working from is a standard worksheet). If you choose to move your chart to another worksheet you will have to choose which one you want to send it to, i.e. worksheet 2 or 3.
Tip: These other worksheets are available through tabs at the bottom left hand corner of your current work sheet.
Once you have mastered these skills you will be ready to attend our Advanced Excel Course, and really advanced might want to try VBA for Excel in Brighton, Sussex.
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Excel Training on May 6th, 2009 | No Comments »
A Chart sheet is a type of worksheet that is completely devoted to a chart and can’t contain any other information. If you choose this option when you move your chart Excel 2007 will create a new Chart sheet which you can access using the tabs in the bottom left hand corner of your screen.
In the Move chart option bar, you can create a chart sheet by clicking on the “New sheet” option. Before you press OK give the chart a sensible name – in this case call it “Vehicle Sales”. When you press OK Excel will take you to the new chart sheet which will look like this:
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Posted by Alistair Wylie in Excel Training on May 6th, 2009 | No Comments »
