Computer E-Learning

Welcome to the Microsoft Excel 2007 Essentials workshop. Excel is the world’s premier spreadsheet software. You can use Excel to analyze numbers, keep track of data, and graphically represent your information. With Excel 2007, you can manage more data than ever, with increased worksheet and workbook sizes. Excel also makes your job easier by providing an easy to use interface, and an array of powerful tools to help you turn your data into useable information – and better information leads to better decision making!

In this module, you will learn to open and close Excel. You will also explore the Excel interface, and be able to differentiate between cells, rows, columns, worksheets, and workbooks.

Generally, you will create worksheets with a purpose in mind. You may need to add up a series of numbers, like sales figures or expenses. Or, you may be keeping track of something, like inventory or class registrations. Spend some time thinking about exactly what you want from your spreadsheet. Then plan how you are going to lay out the data and calculations. The structure of your worksheet depends on what you are trying to do, but most worksheets consist of data organized into rows or columns.

You should save your workbook as soon as you start it, in order to protect your work. Excel 2007 introduces a new file format, and gives you more options for saving than ever before.

Once you have data entered in your workbook, you may find it helpful to change the way you view each worksheet. You can make sure that it is going to print nicely, control page breaks, and change how much of your worksheet appears on screen.

It’s easy to print worksheets in Excel. Before you print your worksheet, you might want to change some of the page settings. Once you are satisfied with your layout, you can print your worksheet(s).

The backbone of Excel is its ability to perform calculations. There are two ways to set up calculations in Excel: using formulas or using functions. Formulas are mathematical expressions that you build yourself. You need to follow proper math principles in order to obtain the expected answer. Building the formula is simply a matter of combining the proper cell addresses with the correct operators. We will explore functions in the next module.

So far, we have performed simple calculations in Excel, combining cell references and operators. Excel functions take calculations one step further, making it easier to do complex or tedious calculations.

Now that you can create a basic worksheet and perform calculations, you might be interested in ways to make spreadsheet creation faster. You can use Excel to fill in days of the week or months of the year, or use Excel’s AutoComplete feature to quickly write functions. To get more out of your data, you can sort and filter it. We will look at all of these tools in this module.

In this module, we will look at how to make your worksheet more appealing by changing the font type and size, alignment, formatting numbers, and by adding color and borders.

There are other ways to enhance your worksheet. You can add borders and shading, apply styles and conditional formatting to cells, and change the theme of the workbook.

Although this workshop is coming to a close, we hope that your journey to improve your Excel skills is just beginning. Please take a moment to review and update your action plan. This will be a key tool to guide your progress in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. We wish you the best of luck on the rest of your travels!