Are you ready to dive into the basics of Excel?
How do you access Microsoft Excel?
There are plenty of ways to access Microosft Excel. Here are just a few:
- Buy it online by downloading it from Microsoft’s website
- Purchase the software from from a computer store
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.
Click on start menu
Point to all programs
Point to Microsoft Excel
Click on Microsoft Excel
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
Click on start menu
Search for Excel N.B. even before you even typing, all programs starting with what you have typed will be listed.
Click on Microsoft Excel
The following image shows you how to do this
Understanding how to use the tool
You have the tool open and you are staring at the screen wondering what’s what. Here is a quick guide to show you what is what.
Screen shot 1: Basics of Excel
Let me explain what each item in the screen shot means:
Ribbon start button – it is used to access commands such as creating a new document, accessing templates 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 sparklines bar groups similar charts related to the sparkline together.
Tip: Try this out your self and see if you understand the flow. I am sure it will be easy enough to move to the next step
Screen shot 2: Work sheet and Work book
The screen shot above is an image of a single work sheet. Multiple work sheets make up a work book.
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 labeled 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.
Tip: Take a piece of papers and a ruler and make similar rows and columns. Essentially each work sheet has several rows and columns like the lines that you drew on your piece of paper.
Learning excel and advancing in the tool can be daunting. What if I told you there are some core concepts, functions, formulas and charts that will give you a leg up above the rest. Well look no further. Learning these will place you ahead of your competition and make you stand out!
