Tutorial 2: Microsoft Excel Basics

     The Microsoft Office Suite is loaded with useful programs, including word processing, spreadsheets, note taking programs, and even an e-mail application. The most useful program I have used is Microsoft Excel, which is the spreadsheet application.  Excel by definition, is: “a commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications”. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel

     The amount of information that can be contained in just one excel worksheet is staggering! I’ve included some interesting facts about the exceptional amount of information that can be entered into Excel 2007.

**One spreadsheet file can contain more than 1,000 worksheets

**Can have more than 16,000 columns and more than 1 million rows

** More than 17 billion cells

     The most useful function on Microsoft Excel is its ability to use many different functions and formulas to automatically calculate just about anything you could need. However, in order to get accurate answers, there is a certain way that formulas and functions must be typed into the Excel spreadsheet. In order to understand the correct way to input information into a spreadsheet, there are basic terms one needs to be familiar with. 

     After learning the basics, Excel will almost instantly become one of your favorite tools!

     Here are some terms to keep in mind while using Excel:

1. Spreadsheet: Allows users to organize data in rows and columns and perform calculations on the data

2. Cell: The intersection of a row and column  

     **Cells can contain three types of data: Labels, values, and formulas

3. Worksheet: The rows and columns are collectively called a worksheet

4. Workbook: A collection of worksheets

5. Label: The text in a cell that identifies the worksheet data and helps to organize the worksheet

6. Value: A number in a cell that can be used in a calculation

7. Formula: Performs calculations on the data in the worksheet and displays the resulting value in a cell, usually the cell containing the formula.

8. Function: Predefined formula that performs common calculations such as adding

     **When inserting a function, an = must always be the first character.

Here is a worksheet, with some main parts highlighted for clarification:

     There are four formulas I seem to use more often then most when analyzing data in Microsoft Excel. They include Summation, Average, Minimum, and Maximum. Below are definitions of the formulas, complete with screen shots providing examples. The data I have chosen to help show the formulas consists of ten students fictitious test scores.

1. SUM: The SUM function takes all the numbers in a specified range and adds them together. For example, for data in the example, the syntax would be =SUM(A2:A11)
 

2. AVERAGE: Provides the average of a range of numbers. In the example above, the syntax would be =AVERAGE(A2:A11)

 

3. MINIMUM: Provides the smallest number in a set of values. In the example above, the syntax would be =MIN(A2:A11)

4. MAXIMUM: Provides the largest number in a set of values. In the example above, the syntax would be =MAX(A2:A11)

     Using these different function to analyze data make it easy to determine what parts of the data are significant and what parts are not. The evolution of spreadsheet applications save tons of time and make it possible to analyze the data in ways that couldn't be done before. The best way to be able to use Microsoft Excel to its full advantage is to first understand the basics, which I hope is a bit clearer now! :)

All screen shots are original by Chelsea Wiseman.