MS Excel is a wonderful piece of software - very robust and a real workhorse. You can create a budget and financial statements, calculate loan payments, chart sales, or hand lists of data. All of these tasks are very easy to perform when you use MS Excel. You can quickly enter information and do simple or sophisticated calculations with all the speed and accuracy that make you love your computer. In this article, I will cover the basics.
Let's start by taking a look at the Excel screen
(click the image for a larger view):
You can find out about each element of the Excel screen by using the mouse.
Click the Help menu name and choose What's This? The mouse pointer changes to a question mark.
Click anywhere on the screen you want more information about.
When you begin a new workbook, the active cell is the one that is surrounded by the bold border, where any typing will appear, in the top-left corner of the worksheet called A1.
Workbooks typically contain three worksheets, although you can easily add or delete sheets. To use or view a different worksheet, click the tab on the bottom of the worksheet. When you click a worksheet's tab, the sheet is displayed so you can work in it.
Continue to Part 2
Carol Bratt is the Office Applications Editor at Daves Computer Tips. She has authored several informative Microsoft Office books and writes the monthly Word Bytes Newsletter with more tips and tricks in each issue. Visit Carol's website for more great Microsoft Office tips and tricks! Click here to see her latest books! You can read more about Carol here.