Lecture Notes on MS Excel 2007 Edited by: Abbas Vattoli What is Excel? Excel is all about numbers. There s almost no limit to what you can do with numbers in Excel, including sorting, advanced calculations, and graphing. In addition, Excel s formatting options mean that whatever you do with your numbers, the result will always look professional. Data files created with Excel are called workbooks (in the same way as Word files are called documents). But where Word starts up with a single blank page, Excel files by default contain three blank worksheets. This gives you the flexibility to store related data in different locations within the same file. More worksheets can be added, and others deleted, as required. You ll often hear Excel files referred to as spreadsheets. This is a generic term, which sometimes means a workbook (file) and sometimes means a worksheet (a page within the file). The Excel 2007 window As in Word 2007, the old menu system has been replaced by the Ribbon and the Office button. The title bar displays the name of your current workbook. Tabs at the bottom of the screen identify the different worksheets available to you Starting Excel Click the Start button and then select All Programs, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Excel. Navigating within a worksheet Using the mouse: Use the vertical and horizontal scroll bars if you want to move to an area of the screen that is not currently visible. To move to a different worksheet, just click on the tab below the worksheet. Using the keyboard: Use the arrow keys, or [PAGE UP] and [PAGE DOWN], to move to a different area of the screen. [CTRL] + [HOME} will take you to cell A1. [CTRL] + [PAGE DOWN] will take you to the next worksheet, or use [CTRL] + [PAGE UP] for the preceding worksheet.
You can jump quickly to a specific cell by pressing [F5] and typing in the cell address. You can also type the cell address in the name box above column A, and press [ENTER]. Overview of data types Excel allows you to enter different sorts of data into the cells on a worksheet, such as dates, text, and numbers. If you understand how Excel treats the different types of data, you ll be able to structure your worksheet as efficiently as possible. Numbers lie at the heart of Excel s functionality. They can be formatted in a variety of different ways. Note that dates and times are stored as numbers in Excel, so that you can calculate the difference between two dates. However, they are usually displayed as if they are text. Text consists mainly of alphabetic characters, but can also include numbers, punctuation marks and special characters. Text fields are not included in numeric calculations. Formulas are the most powerful elements of an Excel spreadsheet. Every formula starts with an = sign, and contains at least one logical or mathematical operation (or special function), combined with numbers and/or cell references. Using Auto fill This is one of Excel s niftiest features. It takes no effort at all to repeat a data series (such as the days of the week, months of the year, or a numbers series such as odd numbers) over a range of cells. 1. Enter the start of the series into a few adjacent cells (enough to show the underlying pattern). 2. Select the cells that contain series data. 3. Move the cursor over the small square in the bottom right-hand corner of the selection (the fill handle). Hold down the mouse button and drag to a range of adjacent cells. 4. The target cells will be filled based on the pattern of the original series cells. Relative cell referencing Relative addressing is what Excel uses by default. This means that when you copy or move a formula to a new location in a worksheet (or even to another workbook), Excel automatically adjusts the cell references in the copied formula to be consistent with the original formula. If the original formula referenced a value five columns to the left and two rows down, then the copied formula will do the same.
Absolute cell referencing If you do not want to change the cell references when it is copied or moved to other cells, prefix a dollar ($) sign to the cell address to make it a fixed cell reference. The cell address A1 is relative cell address and $A$1 is absolute cell reference. The cell address A$1 can be called as mixed cell reference. Functions Excel provides a wide range of built-in functions that can be included in your formulas to save you the effort of having to specify detailed calculations step-by-step. Each function is referred to by a specific name, which acts as a kind of shorthand for the underlying calculation. Because a function is used inside a formula, you ll still need to start off with an equals sign to show Excel that a calculation is required. Using AutoSum Because addition is the most frequently used Excel function, a shortcut has been provided to quickly add a set of numbers: 1. Select the cell where you want the total to appear. 2. Click on the Sum button on the Home ribbon. 3. Check that the correct set of numbers has been selected (indicated by a dotted line). If not, then drag to select a different set of numbers. 4. Press [ENTER] and the total will be calculated. Basic functions Some of the most commonly used functions include: SUM() - to calculate the total of a set of numbers AVERAGE() - to calculate the average of a set of numbers MAX() - to calculate the maximum value within a set of numbers MIN() - to calculate the minimum value within a set of numbers ROUND() - to round a set a values to a specified number of decimal places TODAY () - to show the current date IF() - to calculate a result depending on one or more conditions
The IF() function The IF() function checks for a specific condition. If the condition is met, then one action is taken; if the condition is not met, then a different action is taken. The structure of an IF() function is: =IF (condition, result if true, result if false) Charts A picture is worth a thousand words! Often it s much easier to understand data when it s presented graphically, and Excel provides the perfect tools to do this. Creating a chart is very easy in Excel: Sort 1. Select the data that you want to include in the chart (together with column headings if you have them). 2. Find the Charts category on the Insert ribbon, and select your preferred chart type. 3. That s it! The chart appears in the current window. Move the cursor over the Chart Area to drag it to a new position. The sort function does exactly what it says: it sorts your data records based on the criteria that you specify. You can sort numbers, text or dates, in either ascending (default) or descending order. Blank cells are always placed last in a sort To do this on the Home ribbon, select Sort & Filter. Filter The filter function lets you view just the records that you want to see. The other records in your data table will still be there, but hidden. To do this on the Home ribbon, select Sort & Filter Pivot Table and Pivot Chart Reports A PivotTable report is an interactive way to quickly summarize large amounts of data. Use a PivotTable report to analyze numerical data in detail and to answer unanticipated questions about your data. A PivotTable report is especially designed for: Querying large amounts of data in many user-friendly ways. Subtotaling and aggregating numeric data, summarizing data by categories and subcategories, and creating custom calculations and formulas.
Expanding and collapsing levels of data to focus your results, and drilling down to details from the summary data for areas of interest to you. Moving rows to columns or columns to rows (or "pivoting") to see different summaries of the source data. Filtering, sorting, grouping, and conditionally formatting the most useful and interesting subset of data to enable you to focus on the information that you want. Presenting concise, attractive, and annotated online or printed reports. You often use a PivotTable report when you want to analyze related totals, especially when you have a long list of figures to sum and you want to compare several facts about each figure. Available chart types Microsoft Excel supports many types of charts to help you display data in ways that are meaningful to your audience Column charts data represented by vertical bars Line charts - to show trends over time Pie charts - data displayed as a percentage of the whole pie Bar charts - data represented by horizontal bars Area charts - Emphasize the magnitude of change over time XY (scatter) charts - plot two groups of numbers as one series of xy coordinates Stock charts - to illustrate the fluctuation of stock prices Surface charts - to find optimum combinations between two sets of data Doughnut charts - Like a pie chart, a doughnut chart shows the relationship of parts to a whole, but it can contain more than one data series Bubble charts - bubble size values are listed Radar charts - compare the aggregate values of several data series Creating a scenario (What if analysis) What-If Analysis in Excel allows you to try out different values (scenarios) for formulas. A scenario is a named what-if model that includes variable cells linked together by one or more formulas. Before you create a scenario, you must design your worksheet so that it contains at least one formula that s dependent on cells that can be fed different values. For example, you might want to compare best-case and worst-case scenarios for sales in a coffee shop, based on the number of cups of coffee sold in a week.
Goal Seek Use Goal Seek to find the result you want by adjusting an input value. If you know the result that you want from a formula, but are not sure what input value the formula needs to get that result, use the Goal Seek feature. Conditional formatting Conditional formatting in Excel allows you to highlight cells whose data satisfies certain criteria. For example, you might want to highlight sales margins on products that are less than 5%. Excel enables you to apply formatting to cells that meet certain criteria that you specify. What conditional formatting aims to achieve is to give you a visual way of representing your data that is more easy to take in and understand than merely presenting numbers in a spreadsheet. The following options is made available Data bars, colour scales and icon sets all provide a colourful, graphical way to provide a visual representation of how the data in each cell compares to the other cells in the worksheet. Create a macro You have tasks in Microsoft Excel that you do repeatedly, you can record a macro to automate those tasks. A macro is an action or a set of actions that you can run as many times as you want. When you create a macro, you are recording your mouse clicks and keystrokes. After you create a macro, you can edit it to make minor changes to the way it works. There are two ways you can create a macro:
Use the Macro editor Use the Excel macro recorder Using the macro recorder is by far the easiest method, though you can create some quite complex macros with the macro editor. Financial Functions PMT Function Calculates the payment for a loan based on constant payments and a constant interest rate. Syntax: PMT(rate, nper, pv, [fv], [type]) The PMT function syntax has the following arguments (argument: A value that provides information to an action, an event, a method, a property, a function, or a procedure.): Rate - Required. The interest rate for the loan. Nper- Required. The total number of payments for the loan. Pv - Required. The present value, or the total amount that a series of future payments is worth now; also known as the principal. Fv - Optional. The future value or a cash balance you want to attain after the last payment is made. If fv is omitted, it is assumed to be 0 (zero), that is, the future value of a loan is 0. Type - Optional. The number 0 (zero) or 1 and indicates when payments are due.set type equal to If payments are due. 0 or omitted At the end of the period. 1 At the beginning of the period FV function It returns the future value of an investment based on periodic, constant payments and a constant interest rate. Syntax: FV(rate,nper,pmt,[pv],[type]) IPMT function It returns the interest payment for a given period for an investment based on periodic, constant payments and a constant interest rate. Syntax: IPMT(rate, per, nper, pv, [fv], [type])
ISPMT Function It calculates the interest paid during a specific period of an investment. This function is provided for compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3. Syntax: ISPMT(rate, per, nper, pv) IRR function It returns the internal rate of return for a series of cash flows represented by the numbers in values. These cash flows do not have to be even, as they would be for an annuity. However, the cash flows must occur at regular intervals, such as monthly or annually. The internal rate of return is the interest rate received for an investment consisting of payments (negative values) and income (positive values) that occur at regular periods Syntax: IRR(values, [guess]) NPV Function It calculates the net present value of an investment by using a discount rate and a series of future payments (negative values) and income (positive values). Syntax: NPV(rate,value1,[value2],...)