Using Microsoft Excel

Transcription

1 Using Microsoft Excel Key skill [Where it is introduced] To open MS Excel. To open an existing spreadsheet. How to do it! Start > All Programs > Microsost Office > Microsoft Office Excel 2003 File > Open > Navigate to the file you wish to open. Alternatively, use this button. To move between sheets in a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet file can contain more than one sheet of information. To switch between sheets, click on the sheet you want to see at the bottom of the screen. To enter data into a spreadsheet. To edit information in a spreadsheet cell. A spreadsheet consists of cells arranged in vertical columns (arranged alphabetically) and horizontal rows (numbered). To enter information into a cell, move to the cell using the mouse or arrow keys. Then type. If you are editing information already inside a cell, press F2 to make the cell editable, or click in the formula bar which displays the text. Note if you click on a cell which contains information and type without pressing F2, you will replace whatever is already in the cell. To insert a row or column. To insert a new row or column into your spreadsheet, move to where you want the new row or column and choose Insert > Row or Insert > Column. Rows will be inserted above the cell you are in, and columns will be inserted to the left. To save a spreadsheet. To adjust column widths. File > Save Or File > Save As To adjust the width of your column, move your mouse up to the gap between two column headings. The cursor will change to double ended arrow. Click and drag the column to your desired width. To present the information in a spreadsheet as a bar graph. To create a bar graph of your information, first highlight all the information you want included in the bar graph. Include your column headings.

2 Then click the Chart Wizard button from the toolbar. Follow the wizard though the step by step process. At step three, give your graph a title label your axis. At step four, leave the option As Object in Sheet1 selected. This will place your graph on the same page as your table of data. Once your chart is inserted into the spreadsheet, you can drag it to the place you want it. To print a spreadsheet and graph. Printing needs to be done carefully in Excel. First, make sure the graph is not selected (if the graph is selected, you ll see a thicker black line around it, and small black squares in each corner, and halfway along each line). If you print with the graph selected, only the graph will print. To print the graph and information together, click away from the graph. Then choose File > Print Preview. This will show you whether your spreadsheet will print properly. In this example, the graph is too far across. Close Print Preview (using Close from the toolbar). You ll now see a dotted black line representing the edge of a printed page.

3 You can now drag the graph across the page so it fits. To present spreadsheet information as a line graph. To present two sets of information in a line graph. Repeat the steps for presenting as a bar graph, but select Chart Type: Line at the first step of the wizard. Showing two sets of information on a line graph requires no extra work beyond entering two sets of data on the spreadsheet. Highlight the information in the same way and the chart wizard will interpret and label both sets of data. To use the formula button to create totals. The formula button allows you to use your spreadsheets to perform mathematical calculations. To find a total of numbers in a column or row, click in the cell which you would like to display your total in. The click the formula button. Excel will guess what you want added together in this case, the column of numbers above the cell. If Excel has guessed correctly, press enter on your keyboard and move on. If not, use the mouse to highlight the cells you want added together. The formula being used for the cell will be shown in the formula bar.

4 To use the formula button to add, multiply and find averages. The default setting of the formula button is to find a total. The drop down arrow alongside it allows you some other options: Sum creates a total of all numbers in the selected cells. Average adds the cells together then divides by the number of cells. Count simply counts the number of different values in the selected cells. Max and Min find the largest and smallest values in the selected cells. In addition to these options, you can use the formula bar to create formulas of your own. Formulas need to begin with an equals sign. Follow this with the cells you wish to work with and the mathematical symbols necessary. For instance, to add cells A1 and A2, type =A1+A2 To multiply them, type =A1*A2 To subtract one from the other, type =A1-A2 To divide one by the other, type =A1/A2 To find an average manually, type =(A1+A2)/2 To format information in a spreadsheet. There are various ways of formatting information in Excel. First of all, the standard text formatting options available in Microsoft programmes are available in Excel. These buttons control font, size, text effects and alignment. The final two buttons on the toolbar allow you to colour a cell or change text colour. Further options are available through Format > Cells

5 The tabs along the top of this dialogue box open all the options. In the first screen, you can change the way numbers in the cells are formatted for example, you can set the cells to always display two decimal places if you are working with money. To present information graphically. Once you have created your graph, you can make all sorts of changes to its appearance. By double clicking on a label, or the gridlines, or the background, or the bars, you will be given the option of changing colours, lines, fonts, etc.