CALCULATING WITH THE COMPUTER:

Excel a beginning! 1995 The Garlic Press (Edited 4/19/04 ADA)

SPREADSHEET ESSENTIALS PART I

1. PREPARATIONS
2. STARTING UP
3. ENTERING DATA
4. DELETING AND INSERTING DATA
5. FORMULAS AND FUNCTIONS
6. SAVING
7. PRINTING
8. QUITTING EXCEL
9. ACCESSING AN EXISTING SPREADSHEET DOCUMENT

EDITING YOUR SPREADSHEET PART II

10. CUT/COPY AND PASTING
11. DELETING
12. FORMATTING TEXT
13. CHANGING COLUMN WIDTH
14. INSERTING NEW COLUMNS OR ROWS
15. OTHER SPREADSHEET INFORMATION
16. PRACTICE EXERCISES--NOT AVAILABLE

SPREADSHEET ESSENTIALS PART I

1. If you are a first time PC user, go through the Basic Windows 95/98
2. If you are a first time Mac user, go through the Mac Intro
3. If you are a first time spreadsheet user review Spreadsheet Basics

1. Place data disk into the disk drive (initialize if necessary).
2. Use the mouse to move the cursor arrow to the "Server disk" icon, then double click (twice fast)
3. Open the "Applications Folder", open the "Word Processing/Spreadsheets" folder, open "Microsoft Office" folder, click two times on "Excel"
4. Open "Excel" by pointing and clicking two times. You will get a page of empty cells ready for input from you but first if you are new to Excel
5. Choose Show Balloons from the menu at the top right (it is the comic strip balloon with a question mark inside )
6. Move the mouse arrow over the various areas of the spreadsheet to see what they are. Don't worry if you don't understand every explanation
7. Choose Hide Balloons from the menu at the top right to keep balloon help from showing.

• Move the mouse cursor to the cell you want to enter data and click. You can tell you are on a particular cell because it will have an extra heavy box around it (see C6 in spreadsheet at the top). Type your entry (label data, formula).

You can move from cell to cell to enter data or make corrections by using the <tab> key, the arrow keys, or the mouse.

Move to the cell you want to change with the mouse, arrow keys or tab key, then:

• To delete characters-make corrections in the "Data entry/correction" box, under the menu (see spreadsheet example at the top of this page). Use the mouse (arrow, mouse) to move the cursor to the right of the material to be deleted, click, then press «delete» key.

Place the cursor at the beginning of the material to delete, hold down the mouse button, drag, and highlight material. Press «delete» key to delete all highlighted material.

• To clear a cell-position mouse cursor in the cell and press the <delete> key.
• To insert-position mouse cursor in the entry box at entry location, click, type in additional text.

• FORMULA: to place a formula in a spreadsheet (1) click the mouse in the cell you want the outcome of the formula to appear, (2) type an equals sign "=" as the first character, (3) follow with your formula, composed of cell locations and numbers (4) press <return> key or click mouse on the check mark by the data entry box
• FUNCTION: just like formulas except type in the name of the function in the formula (e.g.. =SUM (A1:D1). You can also get functions by choosing the Function wizard from the tools menu and following the steps

BACK

1. Use mouse to move cursor arrow to the File menu, drag until "Save as... " is highlighted and release the mouse
2. Type in a brief name for your document, click on "Desktop" , then open (double click) your data disk listed on the desktop (the name you gave it). Then click in the "Save" box.

• Under the File menu select Print and then the quality of print you want from the box ("Best" or "Faster..."), then click on OK.

1. Make sure your current work is saved if you want to keep your spreadsheet (see "Saving" above).
2. Drag File menu, select "Quit" ("Quit" is highlighted) and release mouse button
3. Drag your data disk to the trash and remove your disk. Do not turn the lab computers off.

• Find the document and click two times with the mouse cursor in the middle of the document icon

EDITING YOUR SPREADSHEET PART II

1. Drag the mouse over the area (cells, columns, rows) to select a text or data.
2. From the Edit menu choose "Cut" (to copy and remove from the selected area) or "Copy" (to copy from the selected area leaving the original in place)
3. Select the same size area as copied in the new location for the data and choose "paste" from the Edit menu.

1. Select the area data [cells, column(s), row(s) or contiguous area, to be formatted] to be deleted,
2. Choose "Delete" from the Edit menu,
3. A window will ask you to choose which way to move the remaining cells to take up the deleted space [think about this, it could drastically change your spreadsheet calculations]

1. Choose the text or data [cells, column(s), row(s) or contiguous area, to be formatted]
2. Choose the appropriate icon formatting tool from the toolbar.

Bold Italic or Underline

Left, center, right alignment

Dollar decimals or percents

BACK

1. select the column
2. move mouse to the right edge of the column -the mouse cursor will change to a line with an arrow on each side. See the double arrow between column A and B in the image below.
3. drag the line to the width you desire

BACK

1. select the column to the left or row above the row or column you want to add space by clicking on the row number or the column letter

• Spreadsheet Basics
• Spreadsheet Statistics (NOT AVAILABLE)
• Excel Charts
• Excel Data Base
• Spreadsheets Relational Example (NOT AVAILABLE)

• For anyone who keeps or may in the future keep a household budget use the spreadsheet at the beginning of this document as a model and develop a personal budget using your expense categories. Do this for a 6 month period with summaries for each category for the 6 months. To see a complete sample download the spreadsheet by clicking below:
Budget Spreadsheet Sample Double click the downloaded spreadsheet to start EXCEL. Examine the contents formulas, labels, etc. by clicking on the cells and examining the contents in the "Date entry/Correction" box.
 
• A Checkbook balancing spreadsheet. Create a checkbook balancing spreadsheet with at least 10 entries. You have to replace the result cells with the formulas that will create the results.

• A college class grade book spreadsheet.  This spreadsheet explains the grading policy and displays results.  You have to replace the result cells with the formulas that will create the results.

[Not Available] For current are future teachers, create a grading spreadsheet for a class. Use your own categories for grades (tests, quizzes, attendance, etc.) To see a sample grade sheet as used for a computer literacy course download the grade book spreadsheet, by clicking and holding the mouse button here:

Grade book Spreadsheet Sample--NOT AVAILABLE Double click the downloaded spreadsheet to start EXCEL and load the spreadsheet. Examine the contents formulas, labels, etc. by clicking on the cells and examining the contents in the "Date entry/Correction" box.
 

For a future small business owner, create a spreadsheet of costs and profits. Use your own categories for your possible business (rent, franchise cost, sales, salaries etc.) To see a sample grade sheet for a small business download the business spreadsheet by clicking and holding the mouse button here:

Business Spreadsheet Sample Double click the downloaded spreadsheet to start EXCEL and load the spreadsheet. Examine the contents formulas, labels, etc. by clicking on the cells and examining the contents in the "Date entry/Correction" box.
 

[Not Available] For a future social scientist, create a spreadsheet of answers on a questionnaire. Use your own sample questionnaire for your possible survey. Click here to see a questionnaire I have used Excel for analysis

Sample Survey--NOT AVAILABLE To see a sample survey spreadsheet used for this data download the survey spreadsheet by clicking and holding the mouse button here: Sample Survey Eecel--NOT AVAILABLE Double click the downloaded spreadsheet to start EXCEL and load the spreadsheet. Examine the contents formulas, labels, etc. by clicking on the cells and examining the contents in the "Date entry/Correction" box.