Getting Started with Excel

In this lesson

• What Microsoft Excel is and what it can be used for
• Understanding workbooks and worksheets
• Rows, columns and cells
• Understanding cell addresses
• Entering and editing information
• Moving around an Excel worksheet
• Making simple formatting changes
• Adjusting column widths
• Saving your Excel workbook
• Building a simple practice worksheet

The ideas behind this lesson

What Excel is for

Excel is a spreadsheet program. We use it to organise information, work with numbers, create lists, prepare budgets and perform calculations — and, later on, to create charts and reports. It is used in many workplaces, but it is just as useful at home: a household budget, an expenses list, a simple stock or inventory list, a contact list, or anywhere you need to keep track of information.

Workbooks and worksheets

When you create or open an Excel file, the whole file is called a workbook. Inside that workbook are worksheets — the tabs along the bottom of the screen, often starting with one called Sheet1. A workbook can hold one worksheet or several. So: the file is the workbook, and the pages inside it are worksheets. For this lesson we only need one.

Rows, columns and cells

The vertical sections are columns, and Excel identifies them with letters — column A, column B, column C. The horizontal sections are rows, identified with numbers — row 1, row 2, row 3. Where a row and a column meet, you have a cell. Click in the very first one and you are in cell A1; move across to column B and down to row 3 and you are in cell B3.

That is called a cell reference, or cell address. There is nothing to memorise: the letter tells you the column, the number tells you the row. The more you click around, the more familiar it becomes.

Entering information

Click a cell, type, and press Enter to move down to the next one — or click straight into another cell instead. Excel holds both text and numbers quite happily. If you make a mistake, select the cell and edit it, or delete it and enter it again. At this stage, do not worry about making the worksheet look perfect. We are simply learning how information goes in.

Selecting and moving around

You can select a cell by clicking it, move between cells with the arrow keys, or use Tab to move across to the next one. The selected cell has a border around it — that is how you know which cell is currently active. One of the best ways to get comfortable with Excel is simply to click different cells and notice their cell references as you go.

A very small amount of formatting

Just enough to make the headings easy to pick out: select them and make them bold, and widen one column slightly so the information fits comfortably. That is all the formatting this lesson needs. Number formats, alignment, borders and making a worksheet properly readable come in Lesson 2.

Saving the workbook

Go to File and choose Save As, or whichever Save option your version of Excel offers. Choose where you want the workbook to go, and give it a meaningful name — in the video it is saved as Monthly Expenses Practice. Clear file names make a file far easier to find later, and the folder you choose matters as much as the name.

The practice data

This is the small household expenses example used in the video. Open a blank workbook and type it in as you watch — the typing is the lesson.