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9/08

Intro to Excel 2

Class Objective:

In this class, you will become familiar with the following features of Microsoft Excel:

• Formatting columns and cells• Using formulas in tables• Using formulas between worksheets• Sorting data in columns and rows• Making charts and graphs from tables

Class Outline:

Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2007................................1Microsoft Excel ..................................................................1Getting Started ..................................................................1The Worksheet................................................................2-3Formulas ........................................................................ 4-7Working Between Excel Worksheets............................7-9Sorting...............................................................................10Charts...........................................................................11-14Saving Your File................................................................15

Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2007, Part 2 / Microsoft Excel / Getting Started 1

Introduction to Microsoft Excel 2007, Part 2

Welcome to the Microsoft Office 2007 Suite. For those of you using Microsoft Office for the first time, congratulations! You’ve chosen a perfect time to learn about this application, since the newest version has undergone a pretty radical revision. For those of you accustomed to Office 2003, don’t worry- there’s some adjustments you need to make when using the new interface, but the basic tools are still the same and there are new improvements.

Microsoft Excel is part of a larger suite of applications called the Microsoft Office suite. The applications in this suite work in a very similar way, and are designed to have a similar “look,” so that once a user masters one application, the rest will be easier to learn. There have been several versions of Microsoft Office over the last 25 years, but the one we’ll be using today is Office 2007, the latest version. There are alternate spreadsheet processing applications, but Excel is far and away the most common.

Microsoft Excel

Excel is a computer application that allows you to create worksheets. A worksheet is a document that allows you to enter & keep track of any kind of data; income, dates, collections, events, what-have-you. In the second class, we’re going to work with formulas to create a functional data-driven worksheet.

Getting Started

Often the best way to learn is by doing. In this class, we’re going to learn Microsoft Excel 2007 by using it to create a basic worksheet, learning the following aspects of Excel along the way:

• Cell formulas• Creating a interrelated worksheet• Getting sheets to work together in a workbook • Creating Charts• Cutting and pasting cells, tables and charts• Additional chart formatting• Sorting

The Worksheet 2

The Worksheet

We are starting with a basic pre-made worksheet (those of you from the first class may recognize it):

First, we want to insert three more columns on the right. To insert a column, click on the column letter to the RIGHT of where you want the column to go (the column just to the right of the Friday column). Then, go to the Home tab on the Ribbon:

On the far right, click on the Insert Command in the Cells group:

A new column will appear to the left of the column you selected.

Give the columns these headings:• Weekly Total• Daily average• 18% sales commission

Saving Your File 15

Saving Your File

• To save your document, click on the Office Button - Save As. If the file was saved before, you will already have a filename. If not, you need to choose a location and name. Use short and simple names, no spaces.

o To save files in a format that other programs can use, under “Save as Type,” chose “Excel 97-2003 Document.”

• Save often! To enable automatic saving, go to Office Button- Excel Options- Save. Click the “Save autorecover information…” check box and pick a time period.

Notes

14 Charts

Charts

While we’re talking about charts, let’s use also use the Chart toolbar to add a title. Go to the Layout Tab and click on the Chart Title command in the Label Group. Pick a title style and apply it to your chart.Sort

ingA text box labeled “Chart Title” will appear in your chart. Click in the box and enter your title.

Now that you’ve got a chart, you can leave it in your worksheet, or right-click on the chart and copy-and-paste it to another worksheet, a whole new workbook, a word document, or even a PowerPoint slide!

The Worksheet 3

The Worksheet (cont.)

“Wrap” the text in the cells in the new column headers. Click on a header cell and then go to Home tab on the Ribbon.Inser

Click on the Wrap Text command in the Alignment group.

Finally, add gridlines to the new area. Highlight it, and then right-click anywhere on the selected area. The mini pop-up toolbar will appear- select the drop down arrow next to the “Borders” icon on from the menu:

ting and Deleting Columns, Rows, and Cells

Formulas4

Formulas

We want the cells in our Weekly Totals column to display the correct amounts. We could add all the cells in each row manually and input our totals, but Excel is designed to do all that work for us using formulas.

Think of formulas as invisible equations inside cells that perform an operation and give an answer. Let’s say we have a simple worksheet:

In this worksheet, Cell A1 (column A, row 1) has the number 2, and Cell B1 has the number 3. We want the sum of the two cells to appear in Cell C1. We could just type in 5, or we could use a formula.

The formula for adding cells is =SUM(cell address, cell address).

To break this formula down:

= the equals sign means that the answer will be expressed in this cell

SUM this means that the formula will be expressed as a numerical solution to an equation

() anything within the brackets is treated like an equation: you can use symbols such as +, -, *, / and so on. You can use numbers, cell addresses, or a combination, such as (b2+3*10)

Anything equations inside brackets are performed first, then any additional operations after the brackets are performed. For example, you could type (a1-a2) * b1. This means that first Excel will subtract a2 from a1 and THEN multiply divide the result by b1.

Common equation symbols:• , add (a1,b1)• : add a range of cells (a1:d13)• - subtract (a1-b3)• * multiply (c3*c4)• / divide (d1/d6)

Charts 13

Charts

Try some different charts types- you don’t have to re-highlight your table; Excel can switch between chart types automatically to show you different looks to your data. Go to the far left of the Design Tab and you’ll see the “Change Chart Type” command in the “Type” Group. A pop-up menu will appear with more chart types. Experiment with a few.

12 Charts

Charts

…and Excel will insert the chart in your worksheet:

Notice that the “percentage change” figure is not included in the chart. That’s because Excel finds the row headings in the table (people’s names) more relevant to the data, so one axis has the names and the other has sales figures. There is no third axis for percentage.

Now that you’ve got a chart open in Excel, you’ll see a new toolbar section appear, called “Chart Tools.” This new toolbar section has lots of commands related to chart layouts and features.

Anytime you want to see this toolbar section, just click on the chart.

Formulas 5

Formulas (cont.)

To enter this formula, we click in the cell where we want the sum to appear (C1). In the cell we type “=SUM(a1,b1)” [no quotation marks].

Once you press enter, the total (5) should appear in the cell.

Notice the box above the worksheet labled “Fx”? This is the “Insert Function” box, and it displays “invisible” cell formulas. It is showing the formula we just entered, although the actual sum (5) is shown in the box.

To add more than two cells together, you have three choices: 1. Add more cells with commas: =SUM(a1,b1,c1,d1). This is the easiest way if you are adding cells that are NOT in the same line or row. 2. Use a colon to denote a range of cells. For example if you wanted to add cells a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, and a6, you could simply type: =SUM(a1:a6) 3. If the cells you want to add are all in a single row or column, you can use the AutoSum feature. First, highlight the row or column of cells you want to add up. Then, click on the Autosum icon in “Function Library” group in the Formulas tab.

The formula will be automatically created and entered!

Formulas (cont.)

Now, complete our sample worksheet, trying all three methods. The totals should appear under the “Weekly Totals” heading. Your sheet should look like this if you entered the totals correctly:

For the first cell, you could have typed any of the following:=SUM(c3:g3)=SUM(c3,d3,e3,f3,g3)Or used the AutoSum feature.

Let’s try some other types of formulas. To get your daily average, you can use the AVERAGE formula. Click in the empty cell under the “Daily Average” heading and type in this formula: =AVERAGE(cell address: cell address). In the worksheet, that should look like =AVERAGE(C4:G4). Note- you don’t want to accidentally add your weekly total column because that is unrelated to your daily average.

Now that you’ve got the first cell done, use the Autofill feature to automatically fill in the formulas for the rest of the cells. Click on the cell you just completed that shows the daily average. You’ll see a border appear around the cell with a tiny box in the lower right-hand corner- this is called a “fill handle.”

Click on the fill handle and drag it down the empty column, and Excel will fill in all the formulas for you:

Formulas6 Charts 11

Charts

A very popular feature in Excel is the ability to easily make charts from data entered in tables. Charts present data in a graphic format, so they have much more visible impact. Charts also come in a wide array of choices, so you can choose the type of chart that best fits your data and presentation.

The most important thing to remember about charts is that they typically only display data between two axis. One axis is usually something like people’s names, or days of the week/years, or some product. The other axis is a numerical value, like a monetary amount, percentage, or item count.

Let’s make a chart! First, select the entire table we just completed. Drag your mouse over it.

Now, click on the Insert Tab. You’ll see the Chart Group of commands:

Pick a chart type that looks good to you- don’t worry, if you don’t like it, because we’ll change it later. Let’s pick a “column” chart for this exercise. Choose one from the drop-down menu (pick the first one from the list):

10 Sorting

Sorting

Another useful Excel feature is the ability to sort a column or row by alphabetical or largest/smallest order. Now that we have results for all our salespeople, let’s sort out the percentage list by highest to lowest to see the winner. Click on the Percentage column and then click on the “Sort and Filter” icon. Choose “Largest to Smallest.”

If you just sort by one column, it can mess up the rest of the chart, since the names won’t match up with the totals.

Excel knows this, so it will ask you if you want to sort the entire chart (by the target column’s n u m b e r s ) . Choose “Expand the selection” from the pop-up menu.

Presto- we can now see who the big winner is!

Formulas/Working Between Excel Worksheets 7

Formulas (cont.)

Let’s try a percentage formula next. Click in the empty cell under the “18% sales commission” heading and type in this formula:

=SUM(h3*.18)

This means that Excel will take cell H3 and multiply it by .18 (the sales commission rate) to give you 18% of the Weekly Total. Once you’ve got that cell displaying correctly, go ahead and drag that formula down to the rest of the sheet using AutoFill.

Working Between Excel Worksheets

Now that we know how to make a table work together using formulas, it’s time to make AN entire workbook work together. Go to sheet 3:

In this sheet, we can compare our performance against others using figures we will get from sheet 2.

Let’s create a formula that will “pull” a total from the cells in sheet 2 and show it here. Click in the empty cell halfway down from “Present Sales Quarter Total” and type this:

=sheet2!h3

8 Working Between Excel Worksheets (cont.)

Working Between Excel Worksheets (cont.)

After the equals sign, you’ll see that we are naming another sheet (sheet2) and putting an exclamation point after it. This tells Excel to “refer” to that worksheet. When you press enter, you should see the value in cell H3 on sheet 2 appear. That was just an example. The real number that we need in this cell is the total of all the sales in the quarter, so we need to have Excel take all the weekly sales totals in sheet 2 and add them, and show the number here. Remember that the usual formula to add cells would be =SUM(h3:h8)

Let’s change the formula in the cell on Sheet3 to add cells that are on another sheet:

=SUM(sheet2!h3:h8)

Voila! Your total for cells H3 through H8 on sheet 2 now appears in a cell on sheet 3.

Working Between Excel Worksheets (cont.) 9

Working Between Excel Worksheets (cont.)

Now we can fill out the last column (Percentage Change) and find out who won the big bonus. Click in the first empty cell under that heading (D2).

Let’s think of a formula that will calculate the percentage people have improved between last quarter and this quarter.

We start with =SUM, as always.

We need to take the current quarter total and subtract last quarter’s total:=SUM(C2-B2)

And then divide by the current quarter total again to get the percent increase (or decrease)

This looks correct, because Bob did indeed sell more last quarter than this quarter, so his performance is negative 11%. Now we can see how our performance will shape up against the others. Drag the fill handle down to put the formulas in the other cells.

Hopefully, it’s clear now that you can put most any basic equation after the =SUM sign, as long as it’s in parenthesis.