Excel Lesson
What You See and What You Have – data, formula, and formatting
Demonstration Video at YouTube: http://youtu.be/Ge2oEM4sHeE
Contents
Skills Covered: ........................................................................................................................................... 1
Activities:................................................................................................................................................... 1
I.
Creating and saving a new spreadsheet book file ........................................................................ 1
II.
Entering text and data .................................................................................................................. 1
III.
Simple Formula ......................................................................................................................... 3
IV.
Formatting................................................................................................................................. 6
Individual Practice ................................................................................................................................... 10
Skills Covered:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Creating and saving a new file
Entering text and data
Simple formula
a. Simple functions: SUM and AVERAGE
b. Auto Fill
Formatting cells
Activities:
I.
Creating and saving a new spreadsheet book file:
1. Open Excel. How? Click the Start button  All Programs  Microsoft Office  Excel.
2. Save the file in the folder and the file name specified by the instructor. To save, click on the File
menu, then Save As or Save & Send depending on where you save the file.
II.
Entering text and data: First, let’s enter text.
1. In cell A1, enter ABC Café Quarterly Sale Report then press Enter.
2. In cell B2, enter Quarter 1 then press Enter.
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3. Using the Auto Fill tool (the red circle in the image below), fill C2 through E2. How?
4. In cells A3, A4, and A5, enter: Downtown, Capitol Hill, and University District respectively.
You may see the text you’ve just entered appear spilled over to column 2. That isn’t quite so.
Let’s check. Click on the cell A5, and you will see University District in the formula bar as shown
below. If you click on the cell B5, you won’t see anything in the formula bar.
5. Let’s widen the column width to line up the columns better. Here is how:
6. We are ready to enter data. You can enter datum one cell at a time. However, I will show you a
quicker way. First, select the range of cells between B3 through E5. How? Click the cell B3, hold
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down the button, drag the pointer to the cell E5, and release.
7. The active cell is B3. Using the number keys, enter 100 followed by an Enter key, then enter 200
followed by an Enter, then enter 300 followed by an Enter, and so on all the way. It should look
as below:
8. In cell A6, enter Total. In cell F3, enter Average. That is all the text and data you need to enter.
We will work on formulae.
Simple Formula: Unlike text and data, formulae give us information. For example: What is the
annual sales of the Downtown branch? What would be the next year’s sales if we increase the
sales by 15%? This sort of information from data analysis helps us making better decisions.
There is a few components in a formula. First, it starts with an equal sign = followed by numbers,
cell reference, and/or functions. Let’s explore how they work.
1. Select the cell B6 by clicking on the cell. Then, click on the sigma (Σ) button in the Editing group
under the Home tab. That is the SUM function tool.
III.
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Then, you should see a line of marching ants around the range of cells that you need to add up.
It should look like:
Once you confirm the formula is correct, press the Enter key.
How to confirm if the formula is correct? First, look at the marching ants. Do they surround the
correct cells? Second, the SUM function in the formula is for adding the values within the ranges
of cells indicated in the parenthesis. In this case, the range is B3:B5.
2. So, is what you see is what you have? Take a look at the cell B6 and the formula bar.
What you see is 600 in the cell B6 while the formula bar shows =SUM(B3:B5). So, what is the
true content of the cell B6? I will let you find by changing the value in the cell B3 to 1,000. Did B6
change, too? What do you see in the formula bar?
So, the actual content of the cell B6 is what you have in the formula bar and not the number you
see in the cell. The number you see in the cell changes based on the cells that it adds. And that is
good. When you change/update a part of data, Excel automatically recalculate cells using the
updated datum. And that recalculation could be extensive depending on how many times you
use that datum in other cells.
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3. Copy the formula using the Auto Fill tool as shown below.
4. Let’s calculate the averages. Select the cell F3. Here is how:
5. You should see the marching ants around the cell range B3 through E3 (B3:E3).
Once you confirm the formula, press the Enter key.
6. Copy the formula from F3 to F4 through F5 using the Auto Fill tool. It should look as below:
Again, the numbers you see in the column F (the averages) and row 6 (the totals) are
information. And this is how you analyze data which are in the cells in B3:E5. The data have to
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be updated manually while information as long as they are based on formula gets updated
automatically. That is the advantage of using spreadsheet applications such as Excel.
Formatting: We will apply formatting to cells and the table. It creates a professional look and
serves functional benefits.
1. Let’s format the table. Select the ranges of cells from A2 through F6 (A2:F6) by clicking on the
cell A2, hold down and drag to F6. Then release the pointer.
2. Let’s apply formatting on the selected cells. Here is how:
IV.
3. In the follow up dialog box (the Format As Table), notice that the My table has headers option is
checked. The headers are: Quarter 1, Quarter 2, Quarter 3, and Quarter 4 in our table.
Click OK.
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4. You will notice that each column of the table has a dropdown menu. It offers table tools such as
sort and filter. We will learn these later.
5. To remove the dropdown buttons, click the Covert to Range tool under the Design tab. If you
don’t see the Design tab, you need to select the table (select any cell of the table).
6. Click OK to convert to a range. It removes the table tools/functions from the table. In essence,
you lose some analytical tools and gain a better look.
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7. Let’s apply a dollar sign ($) to the Average and the Total cells. First select the cells from F3 to F5.
8. Apply the same formatting for the Total cells. At the end, it should look as below:
Finally, let’s merge and center the table title: ABC Café Quarterly Sales Report across the table
from the column A through F. Here is how:
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It should look as below:
9. Excel has the common formatting tools such as bold, italic, center-align, colors that are shared
by other Microsoft Office applications such as MS Word. To apply formatting, select the cell(s),
and then click on the formatting tools as shown below:
Apply formatting to the cells ranging A3:A6 as shown below.
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10. Delete the content of cell A2. How? Select the cell and press the Delete key on the keyboard. At
the end, it should look as:
11. Save the workbook.
Individual Practice
Using the skills and the tools you have learned, create the following table below:
Be sure to use your own data (the sales numbers) and formatting scheme (color and design). Save the
workbook.
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