Excel How-To: Starting a Basic Spreadsheet

In this video we are going to cover how to start a

basic

spreadsheet

. Let's say in this example you are a teacher and you want to go ahead and track your students' test results. That is a simple application that you can use in the form of an Excel

spreadsheet

. and as we move forward here and introduce you to some of the additional functions that work with data in cells within rows and columns, the first thing you're going to want is the title of your spreadsheet, usually if you click in the top left corner . -hand cell or cell a1 this is where you can type your title now before you start typing anything, be it a number, be it text, any selected cell or your active cell is the cell that will start receiving your data input, so once again I've clicked on cell a1 and I'm going to type in my title for this spreadsheet and since I'm a history teacher in this example, I'm going to type in the final exam results for history class, now by pressing Enter will take me to the next row, so I'm going to go ahead and do that, but before I do that, take a look at how the title or what I typed in that cell appears, not just within cell a1, but also extending to along columns B and C.

I'm going to talk to you about how to center a title in a spreadsheet in a moment. Also notice that here and in what's called the formula bar, that text appears there as well, which is helpful when it comes time to edit or make changes. to the text that you entered by pressing the Enter key, I will be transported to the next row and now I will place my column headings and I will want to include the names of my students. so I'm going to type in the student's name and then when I press tab, I go one cell to the right.

Now you will see how the student name column header extends over column B, don't worry about that, I will show you how. to expand or enlarge its columns, but by clicking on column B, I will go ahead and type the exam result header and then press tab again and type the grade. I'm going to press Enter, okay, now you see what happens. In all columns of a spreadsheet our fixed width is immediate, but you have the ability to adjust the width to fit the entries contained in your column because you see how the student name is now cut off at the end of that column . and the exam result also let's go ahead and fix that.

The first thing I want to do here is that I don't work with the title. I want the title to stand out a little. After all, it's my headline. see how it expands or spreads across columns B and C as I mentioned now, however, if I click on cell a1, I see the text that exists within that cell here in the formula bar, if I click cell b1, which is column B, Row 1. I don't see anything here in the formula bar, same for C which clearly tells me that where I see the history class final exam results, it really exists only within column a, Row 1, so I'm going to highlight that cell and then I can use the formatting icons here from my Home tab in my Excel ribbon and I can click on the bold notice that there's also a keyboard shortcut Ctrl B , but I click on the icon and that title or header is bold.

Now I'm also going to increase the Sigh font and I have this little drop-down menu here. I'm going to increase the font size so it stands out a little. Now it's one of the cool features of a lot of the aspects here and as you can see, I'm doing it in Excel. 2007 is that if you are going to apply a change to the appearance or appearance of a component in your spreadsheet, in many cases you can simply hover over the different options and see those options actually take effect in the background and are applied before you actually commit to the change by clicking on what you want.

This makes it very useful to see how your results will appear before making your choice so you can make the best decision you want. I'm going to go ahead and pick sixteen points. or 16 size font when you click now. I'm going to go down here and have a good look. Clearly I have to adjust the column width. Now the shape of the cursor will vary depending on what you are trying to do in a spreadsheet. It is usually a small, more three-dimensional symbol, however, if I move it to the columns, I notice that a small arrow appears pointing down and then when I go between the columns, it changes back to a two-way arrow, so it's very important.

Note the different changes in the appearance of the cursor because when you try to do different things, it will take different shapes now if I move it directly between a and B and it has to be up here where the letters are. It is not in the body of the spreadsheet. Then I can left click, drag that column to the right and zoom in and notice that as I do that, it tells me the dimensions in terms of the width of the column if I hold my hand. left button in, so if I'm looking for a specific dimension I can drag it until I get to that number and drop it now, when I do the same thing between column B and column C, it's helpful to have that dimension displayed because if I say Okay , I made that width 15.

I can do the same thing for my column B and drag it to know that the dimensions are the same four columns A and columns B and if I want, I can take column C to 15 like Okay, now if you need to make a change something you already entered, there are a couple of ways to do it. One of them is to click on the cell and then you can make the changes here in the formula bar. Maybe you want this. to read the students' names instead of the students' name and I just add the s at the end, okay, that will take effect.

I can also double click on the cell and notice that when I double click on the cell I get that little vertical insertion point that would allow me to edit directly in the cell itself and maybe I want to stop reading that to read the student name. I back up on him. I click outside the cell and that change takes effect. A third way to edit the text inside a cell is to use the F2 key. The f2 key I just pressed will automatically perform the same task as if I double clicked the cell, it gives me the vertical insertion point which I can backspace or use the arrow keys to move around and then I can make any necessary changes to the content inside of the cell, I'm now going to add some student names here and press enter, since that's the standard behavior within Excel.

Every time I press enter, it moves down a row. I'm going to type in some additional names enter again enter again, so I have four names here, okay. I'm going to go to the test results column and I'm going to type in a number that represents the score they received on the test I'm going to press Enter I'm going to put in the results for the next person here John Smith in this case low again and Judy did very okay, you performed

excel

lently on the exam, so you got a 100, all right, I'm going to go to the grade column and you can use formulas to determine the grade based on a given scale, but we'll cover four meals a little later, manually enter the letter grade that each of these students received on their final exam and There we go, they all did pretty well now, if I look at what I have so far, I might want to make additional visual or aesthetic changes.

One thing I notice is alignment and this is a very interesting aspect of Excel that is useful to keep in mind. or if you type a number in a cell it will write a line or align it to the right of that column or cell, if you type a letter or a word it will align left automatically if you want to change the alignment note that the group of alignment icons in your ribbon on the Home tab and you can use the icons to set your alignment preferences and there are a few ways to apply formatting changes, one of which is to simply highlight the range of cells you want to make the change to say Me I would like to center them inside the cell inside the column.

I can highlight just the range of cells I want to apply that change to and click the appropriate alignment, but since I only highlight a range if I come down and add another student and then type in their score well, that will continue and continue the sequence of alignment. You can also adjust the formatting for all columns or rows in the column by moving the cursor over the column name or letter and clicking The left mouse button will highlight that column to the end of that spreadsheet, with a value of more than one million 48,000 rows. You can then use any of its formatting icons to apply a change and it will make sure it goes through to the end. down in that column, so if I wanted to click on the center line that will align everything in that column with the center, I'll do the same for my column C.

I'm going to right click on the letter C. I notice that when I move that letter, that arrow appears pointing down. I click on center alignment and that ensures that columns B and C are now center aligned across my entire screen. Another thing you might want to do is highlight Clicking and dragging the headings in this little spreadsheet here to include the student's name, the test result, and the grade, I'm going to hit the bold icon and make sure that they're centered as well by doing click on the center icon. alignment group to make them stand out a little