MS Excel 2010 for Business The Basics 1

Introduction Excel, part of Microsoft’s Office suite of programs, was developed primarily for business use and is now the world’s most widely used spreadsheet program. This note introduces a self-paced tutorial on the basics of MS Excel 2010, for business applications. It is aimed both at those with no experience of Excel, and also those who’ve used it only for presentational purposes, who may be unfamiliar with its use for calculation. A companion file, Simple_functions_in_Excel2010.xlsx offers some quick practice with examples of different types of Excel functions, such as IF, SORT, and NPV. Most of this material applies also to MS Excel2007. These files are also available on the School’s network Q Drive, at Q:\Students\BusStat\Excel…2010, together with some related material; also via the author (see footnote). Learning Aims

The learning aims of this introductory note are to develop (or review) basic familiarity with: the layout and size of an Excel ‘spreadsheet’; the three types of entry – text, numbers and formulas; ways of navigating, simplifying data entry and editing the spreadsheet cells’ contents, including

copying values and formulas; the difference between absolute and relative addressing, which is important to understand when

copying formulas, for setting up tables, and especially for referring to one particular cell from different places on the spreadsheet;

use of formatting to control the appearances of entries; the charting capabilities of Excel; most of all, to encourage an inquisitive approach to experimenting with Excel and checking Help;

it is only through learning by constant ‘trial and error' that effective mastery of parts of this 21st Century equivalent of pen and ink can be developed and maintained.

1 This note has been written and updated by Dr Paul G. Ellis, Teaching and Research Co-ordinator, Management Science and Operations, London Business School pellis@london.edu . No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the permission of the author. Copyright 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011. Earlier Excel2003 version available via the author.

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Basic Moves and the Excel Screen Start Excel via Start/Programs from the lower left corner of the Windows screen. You should soon be looking at one corner of a large sheet, divided into small rectangles called ‘cells’. Each cell can contain one of several different types of information: text, numbers or formulas. Each cell is identified or addressed by a letter indicating its column, and a number indicating its row i.e. its coordinates; so ‘B2’ is a cell address, as shown below; note that it is NOT ‘B times 2’). A cell can be ‘selected’ by moving the mouse and clicking once when the mouse-pointer is over the cell, or by use of the keyboard ‘arrow’ keys. To select a block of cells, click and drag the mouse pointer over the block; another way to select a block is by holding the Shift key while pressing an appropriate arrow key. Notice that when a cell is selected, both the row and column headings are highlighted too. Also, watch how the mouse pointer changes its appearance, according to what it can do at each type of location, when it’s over the menu ‘ribbon’, a row or column heading, or a cell.

Both the mouse and the arrow keys are useful for different actions: the mouse is best when you want to move medium distances, generally within a screen; but the arrow keys are usually better for short moves. However, when arrow keys are used while holding the Control key, you can make much longer or more specific jumps, such as to the end of a row or column of entries, to be described later. If you get stuck, look carefully at the screen for clues, as Microsoft applications offer numerous indications, e.g. via notes attached to buttons (point with the mouse to a button icon below the ‘command tab’ i.e., menu bar), from the Help menu to the right of the main menu tabs, , and via MS Office Online at e.g. http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx for the UK version.

Formula BarSelected cell B2 at Intersection of Column B and Row 2

Tab to switch worksheet

The Ribbon (See Appendices for image of each command tab expanded)

A Command tab Title Bar shows file name = “Book1” (.xlsx)

Name Box

Zoom, in status bar

Quick Access Toolbar

File commands & Backstage view

Buttons to navigate many worksheet tabs

Help

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Navigating an Excel Spreadsheet To get a sense of the size of an empty spreadsheet, and move round it, press the End key followed by the right arrow key. This will take you to the far right side of the worksheet. Columns are identified by letters of the alphabet, in the sequence (A, B, …, Z, AA, AB, ...., AZ, BA, BB, …, BZ,…etc, all the way to …, XFC, XFD) i.e. 2^14 columns. Press the End key again followed by the down arrow; this will take you to the bottom of the worksheet – row number 1,048,576 (2^20). For more information visit http://blogs.msdn.com/b/excel/archive/2005/09/26/474258.aspx the MS Excel blog. Now press the End key and the up arrow to return to the top of the document. Press the Home key to return to the left of the document, and you should find that the focus is back on cell A1. You can usually return to cell A1 from anywhere else in an Excel spreadsheet by holding down a Control key (Ctrl) and pressing the Home key – a useful key combination to remember.

Putting Text in a Spreadsheet – and Saving

=The first type of information that we can put in the cells is text. To start to build up a spreadsheet, type some text in as shown. Note that the choice of cell for each item of text is important, and that even if the text is longer than the space in a cell, all the text is displayed – until it overlaps another cell with content. It is good practice to save your work at fairly frequent intervals, so that you still have at least a partial copy to work with if you run into problems. Change the filename from time to time too, to retain backup copies in case errors have inadvertently been saved.

While deciding where to save it, be aware that the LBS ‘desktop’ gets wiped at logout (so you would lose work saved there if the PC crashes!). Save this file initially, via File and Save As…, e.g. to the C: drive. Thereafter, you can use the Ctrl S key-combination to Save, until you want to save the file under a new name, via File and Save As… again. (NB If your screen differs somewhat, please remember that this document, and the screenshots, are all from Office2010 running under Microsoft’s WINDOWS_7 operating system.)

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Working with Numbers in a Worksheet

We have now created the basis for a worksheet to contain some accounting information for a small company. Next, type in the figures shown below2.

Note that Excel treats alphabetic and numeric contents of a cell completely differently. Once we have typed in some figures, we can carry out calculations on them, by putting some formulas into cells. Unlike with text, however, if a number or date is too long, it fills the cell with #### signs, until the column is widened – which will be covered further on, in the section on Changing Formats.

The first calculations that we want to carry out are to produce totals of the sums spent. Select cell C9 (move the mouse pointer over it, and left-click) and type an = sign. This indicates that you will be putting a formula, or calculation, into the cell (as can also be indicated by a + or, if correct, a – sign). Next, move the mouse over the materials figure for January, and click; type +, then move the mouse over the labour figure for January, click again and type + again. Finally move the mouse to the office overheads figure for January, and click again. Now your formula (adding the three figures together) is complete and you can press the Enter key; you should see the total appear in cell C9. You may have noticed the formula developing, higher up the screen as you built it up, in the formula bar, the space marked fx between the menu/toolbars, and the tops of the spreadsheet columns. Note that when you view a spreadsheet, it won’t generally be obvious whether a number you see is simply a number or the output of a formula, unless you select the cell and then look at the formula bar; check this for C9.

2 To use the numeric keypad on the right edge of a standard keyboard, ensure NumLock is on (press the NumLock key, and a status indicator should come on, somewhere on the keyboard).

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Copying Values and Formulas

You can copy or move numbers and formulas (and, of course, text too) around your Excel worksheet using the same cut, copy, and paste functions that apply elsewhere in Windows applications. Remember that cut puts the contents of a cell onto the clipboard within the program (and disappears from the original cell when the copy on the clipboard is pasted elsewhere – it isn’t the same as delete in Excel – but rather is used to move cell contents). Copy leaves the contents on the spreadsheet in the original cell, while also putting a copy on the clipboard. In both cases you must first select the area that you want to put on the clipboard – i.e. point out the part on which you want the program to operate in some way. Having selected the material to be acted on, and being in the Excel Home tab, there’s a number of ways you could cut, copy or paste within Excel:

One would be to

click one of these icons at the top of the screen:

Or use one of the

short-cut key combinations on the keyboard (you can see what they are when you place the mouse pointer on an icon, which shows e.g. Ctrl C for Copy);

In a few cases there are particular short cuts. Perhaps the most useful is that once you have placed some information on the clipboard, using Cut or Copy, you can paste it somewhere else on the spreadsheet simply by highlighting the cell at the top-left corner of the desired location, then pressing the Enter key.

You can find more information on these frequently used operations in the Excel Help. Now use the Home tab/Clipboard group to copy the formula for the total costs, in one month, from the January column to the February and March columns as follows: Copy the formula from C9 (it automatically goes onto the clipboard). Now highlight D9 and E9 together and click just above Paste. Notice, by selecting each of these cells in turn and looking up to the formula bar, that in all these formulas the addresses are relative, i.e. as they were copied they were also adjusted: so that, as for C9, the formulas in D9 and E9 still refer to the contents of the cells above themselves in columns D and E. Also note the extra options if you click on Paste or the little down-arrow. We will use another method to calculate the total costs in each category (row). This is the AutoSum button – a summation icon (capital Greek in Home tab/Editing group). Select the empty cell F5 and click the AutoSum button. The program will suggest which cells you are most likely to want to sum – in this case C5 to E5; press Enter. Now select F6 to F9, click on the again, and Excel will automatically put the sum formulas into cells F6 to F9.

Notes on selecting To select a single cell, click the left mouse-button once, while the mouse pointer is over that cell. To select a block of cells (including part of a column or row), put the mouse pointer over a cell at one corner of the block, hold the mouse button down, and drag the mouse, with your finger still on the button, to the opposite corner of the area that you want to select. You must start and finish at diagonally opposed corners. To select a whole row or column, click on the row or column header that holds the defining address-number or -letter. TIP For a larger block that already exists, select a cell or cells at one edge of a block, row or column, and, holding Ctrl and Shift, then press an arrow, to reach a far edge of the block. You can repeat this to reach an adjacent edge, thereby selecting the whole of a block of cells. (Omitting the Shift just moves the cursor directly to an end or far-edge cell, without selecting.)

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Editing Cells and Arithmetic Operations

Notice that cell F8 now has an irrelevant ‘0’ in it, because the preceding summations included a blank line. Delete this, as you can delete any cell, by selecting that cell and pressing the Delete key. You can change the contents of any selected cell by either: double-clicking the cell (or click once and press the F2 function key), to place the cursor within

the contents, and also see highlighted any other cells it references; you can then insert or delete part, or retype all its contents; then press Enter (or simply click outside the cell, with the mouse);

or, by clicking on the formula bar near the top of the screen, you can make the change there. The materials figure for March has been mistyped, so use one of these approaches to change it to 10. Notice how the totals usually change automatically when you change one of the contributing numbers (but if not, check Formulas tab/Calculation/Calculation Options/Automatic OR via File/Options /Formulas...).

As you try editing, notice where you find it easiest to use the mouse, and where it is easiest to use the keyboard. If you find yourself often repeating certain simple actions, check the Appendix here, or the internet, for keyboard shortcuts (for a wider range of options, google: “Excel tips & tricks”). The multiplication symbol on most computer packages is a star (*). Use this to put a formula in column G to calculate the Annual Equivalents of the Quarter_1 (Q1) totals.

You should only need to input a formula once here, to complete the calculation of the annual equivalents for all the costs; then copy it to where else you need it (in this case, you will only need to copy it down). Another very useful way to copy, for adjacent cells, is to drag the cell using the fill handle at its lower right corner: delete G6 and G7, then replace them by dragging down cell G5. The other arithmetic operations that you will encounter are: The division symbol, which is a slash “/” sign. So to calculate e.g. “6 divided by 3” would require

you to input =6/3 or, using a cell reference, one might enter e.g. =H9/3 , as you will see on p.8; The symbol to raise by a power (or exponentiate) is a hat (^) reached via Shift+6, so “the square of

the contents of cell H9” would result from the formula =H9^2. (Remember that ‘H9’ is a cell address, it is NOT “H times 9”).

If you’re calculating compound interest after n periods: An = A0*(1+r)^n; or continuous compounding (e.g. for calculating “log returns” for company stocks with daily price fluctuations), then At = A0*EXP(r*t). So, for a single period t=1, and therefore r = loge(e

r) = log(At+1/At). As an Excel formula this would be: = log((At+1/At),2.7182818), as you have to tell Excel the base, 2.71...

If ever there is a risk of an expression being misinterpreted, as with algebra, you can always insert

brackets (in pairs). For example: “=7+14/7 ” represents 9, while “=(7+14)/7 ” represents 3.

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Absolute and Relative Addresses

Akco Ltd wants to take a levy from its annual budget, in each category, to finance a company weekend holiday in Jersey. They start by asking how much a 4% levy would raise – and then experiment with the percentage to explore the decision on whether they can afford the Hôtel de France for the weekend, or only a ‘bed and breakfast’ hotel.

To do this in a spreadsheet, first type into cell C12 the percentage to be levied. Note that if you simply type 4% it will be stored in the computer as 0.04, and the program will display it as a percentage. Now we need to put figures into a new column, column H, which will contain the amount that is expected to be levied, annually, for each category of cost. For row 5 we need a formula for the Materials levy that uses the percentage stored in cell C12, and then we can copy the formula down, into the equivalent cells for Labour and Overheads (rows 6 and 7). We would naturally expect the formula to be: = C12*G5. The levy percentage is in a single cell, C12. The way Excel would read the formula =C12*G5 , if placed in cell H5, uses relative addressing as the usual way to read the C12 and G5 addresses. So Excel interprets the formula as: multiply the content of ‘the cell that is 5 places to the left and 7 places down’ (which is the address of C12, relative to H5), by the content of the cell to the left of H5 (G5 is to the left of H5). If the formula using these relative addresses were copied down from H5 to H6 and H7, then the lower formulas in H6 and H7 would seek the levy percentage in cells 5 left and 7 down from them, i.e. in C13 and C14 respectively – which are blank, and therefore yield the result 0. This is the reason we need to use an absolute address $C$12 for this cell, as indicated by the two $ signs, one fixing the column and the other fixing the row, so they will both remain unchanged when the address is copied. This is an important and slightly subtle point, which if not appreciated can lead to apparently strange effects when copying formulas. To put it a bit differently: when copying cells holding formulas, make cell-addresses absolute using the $ sign, unless you also copy the addresses referred to by the formula(s), in which case, it should be obvious that absolute addressing is not needed. Delete H5, so we can see, below, how it would be done using absolute addressing:

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Place an equals sign (=) in cell H5, to tell Excel that you are inserting a formula; Click on cell C12 containing the percentage of the levy; Now make the address C12 ‘absolute’ by pressing the F4 function-key (on the very top row of a

normal keyboard). You should notice that dollar ($) signs appear before the row and column of the absolute address in the formula, giving $C$12, the first $ sign “fixing” the column to C, and the second fixing the row as row 12;

Type * as the multiplication symbol; Click the mouse-pointer over G5, which contains the expected annual cost of Materials; Press Enter to put the formula into effect. Now you can copy down this version of the formula, and the absolute address $C$12 will work for rows 6 and 7 too. Note also that you can either enter the dollar ($) sign(s) by repeatedly pressing the F4 key, to cycle through the various combinations, or by typing $ sign(s) manually. Either gives you ways of making only the row part, or only the column part of an address absolute, which can be useful for creating tables of formulas (see the Simple_functions_in_ _Excel2010.xlsx spreadsheet that accompanies this material, for more on this). Complete the table with cell H9 (you may need to widen a column to avoid overlap; move the cursor over the right side of a column heading and drag in the required direction). On past trips, about equal amounts were spent on accommodation, travel, and entertainment. To see how much will be available this time, divide the total amount that the weekend levy will yield into three equal parts, by putting the formula =H9/3 into cell H12.

Now, to see the effect of increasing the levy, try changing the percentage to 4.5%. Note that this will be displayed as 5% on the spreadsheet because it rounds percentage figures up to the nearest whole number, unless formatted for e.g. two decimal places. Also, double clicking on H5, as mentioned earlier, to see how Excel highlights all the cells referred to by a formula. (This is one easy and useful way to check formulas generally, and may also help you see when absolute addressing is needed.)

Another useful example of absolute addressing is to accumulate successive values. In the worksheet illustrated above, try putting into cell C10 “=SUM($C9:C9)” and then copy the formula along to D10 and E10. Examine cells C10, D10, and E10 to see how this formula works; then delete them.

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Changing Formats

We have already encountered one problem with formats: cell C12 is in a default percentage format, obscuring some important information by rounding. We can remedy this by changing the cell’s format. First highlight the cell, and go to the Home tab/Cells group; click Format and at the end of the drop-down list Format Cells… Change the percentage format to 2 decimal places. Notice the other formatting options by clicking on the different tabs in this box. However, a quicker way to change the number of decimal points is to click twice the increase decimal button, illustrated below, on the Home tab/Number group.

You can also vary the width and height of cells, as mentioned earlier. Place the mouse pointer on a boundary between two row or column headers, until the mouse pointer becomes a barred+double-headed arrow. At this point, drag the row or column boundary to wider or narrower, using the mouse. As you drag, the current column width or height (in standard-font character spaces, and also in pixels) appears in a small box nearby. You can use the Home tab/Cells group to reach Autofit for column or row via the Format drop-down list. Use one of

these methods to make Column A wide enough to take the complete text “Office overheads”. Now we no longer need an empty Column B. You can delete column B, and thus move everything that is to its right, one cell to the left, by first selecting Column B (click on the header cell so that the whole column is selected); then from the same Home tab/Cells group select Delete and Delete Sheet Columns. (Be careful with this command; if you don’t select a whole row or column, you can end up by accidentally shifting part of a row or column, leaving a ‘step-jump’ in the spreadsheet, which can result in chaos). If done correctly, you should have seen all the right side of the spreadsheet move one column to the left. Be careful not to delete a row by mistake – though if you do make a mistake, you can usually undo it by selecting the Undo button (a blue arrow bent counterclockwise) from the Quick Access Toolbar at the very top left of the Excel screen. This Undo command can also be effected by Ctrl Z, one of the most useful shortcuts of all (and in some circumstances you may be able to go back through a sequence of Undo’s, but don’t rely too much on this). Now try some more formatting options to make your spreadsheet easier to use. First try to show a bold coloured line to the left of column B, so that the headings are separated from the numbers. You can do this by selecting the whole of column B (i.e. clicking on the ‘B’ in the frame at the top of the screen) and then using Format Cells again, as shown. You will need to indicate several things in this dialog box.

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Then try changing the size and maybe some other font-characteristics of the title ‘Akco Management Accounts’. To do this, select cell A1 and again go via the Format Cells dialog box to change the text size. Standard text is often set to 10 point (this default can be changed: File/Options/General), so your heading text needs to be adjusted, via Format Cells, to around 16 point if it is to stand out. There are many other ways that you can alter the format of particular cells – experiment a little with the formatting functions to make your spreadsheet look distinctive and easy to navigate. Once you’ve tried the jazzy colour effects, stop and think for a moment about how best you might use these capabilities in an assignment or a real management report, as distinct from, say, a social announcement. One of the formatting options for cells is a ‘currency’ option. Using this for the spreadsheet that you have created so far could be positively misleading, because the figures that you have used are in thousands of pounds rather than in single pounds. But Akco would like some summary information about the Jersey weekend levy, in single pounds, and in a format that accountants are used to dealing with.

First highlight cells C14 to G19, and create a double border around them, using Format Cells/Border and then within the dialog box that opens choose Style, Colour and Outline. Within the same area, set out the number of pounds (as distinct from £’000) available for each weekend item (accommodation, travel, and entertainment, using the ‘currency’ format) where a ‘standard budget’ has been established at £3000 per item, in pounds sterling. Note how the

options Format Cells/Number/Currency deal with negative numbers. If necessary, clarify any apparent discrepancies by checking numbers of decimal places.

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Printing

If you are preparing a spreadsheet for other people to see, often you will print at least some of it. Think carefully about how it will appear on paper. As with some other Excel menus however, the options can often be navigated by different paths. One way is to start in the Page Layout tab, although once the area to print has been selected, and any headers and footers inserted (Insert tab), most options can still be chosen by going to File/Print, as shown here. Choose the printer and associated choices in Printer Properties. Then work your way down the remaining choices of Print Selection: how much of the file to print: specific pages, the whole ‘workbook’, or a previously selected part; whether 2-sided printing if available; maybe collation, etc. However, some options may appear in more than one place, such as page orientation, which often occurs in both the Printer Properties, and also in Page Setup, at the bottom of the above list (not visible here); so it helps to check the Print Preview, seen on the right-hand side in the screenshot showing above. If necessary, you can revert to an earlier box to make changes; when you are satisfied then choose the large Print button.

Try selecting your Akco spreadsheet and see if you can set it up to print in

Landscape orientation, and fill the page. If you have time to play around, you might also include a Footer with the date, and perhaps Row and column headings. Notice

that you can turn the gridlines on or off in Page Setup/Sheet. Printing Excel involves some different and more complicated options than Word, which is one reason for requiring assignments to have spreadsheets incorporated within the text or submitted as PDF files graphics, not simply as attached or embedded files. For more on this see the final sections of the companion file Simple_functions_in_Excel2010.xlsx.

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Graphing your Data in an Excel Chart

If “a picture is worth a thousand words”, then Excel’s ability to display your data in graphic (chart) form is one of its most important characteristics. Until recently, Excel versions provided a tool called a Wizard that would take you through the choices involved in building a chart in a structured way, to help simplify the process. Now it’s discontinued, we shall see how to do it step-by-step, for ourselves.

If you’ve been saving the Akco spreadsheet from time to time, you can now practise drawing a simple graph of the data. First, ensure there is no gap between the headings and the information that you want to graph. You will probably need to delete row 4 – click on the row number and go to Home tab/Cells group and Delete (or click the Delete drop-down arrow-head and choose Delete Sheet Rows). Be careful not to delete two rows by doing both; if by accident you do delete two rows, then use the undo (via

the Quick Access Menu in the very top line), or Ctrl Z to undo it, as described earlier for columns in the section of this note about Changing Formats, on p. 9, above. Now highlight the cells from A3 to E6, which you will use as the input for your chart. Next, go to Insert tab/Charts group, click Column (to

choose a “column” chart) and from the “gallery” of choices (see image on the right, here) click the top-left 2D icon, which should result in your screen looking something like

the image below.

Before altering the chart that’s now appeared, notice its border remains a wide grey border, showing the graph is still selected, and at the same time you’re now in the Design tab, under what’s called a “contextual tab” (Chart Tools, at the top of the window). If you click outside the graph you return to the Home tab. Click the graph again and see the Chart Tools reappear.

Notice also that it has three subsidiary tabs, Design, Layout and Format.

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First let’s try some simple changes: Resize the chart from the corners, and also half-way along the edges Alter the vertical axis (it may be a bit tricky to get the cursor to select it) Try clicking on various other parts of the chart, to see what else you can change

first left-clicking, and also double left-clicks

Notice you can also right-click on the graph for more general and wider ranges of options. In general, when creating a chart, you would think about: What type of graph is appropriate for the data that you want to convey? For example, in this case

you would probably not want to use a pie-chart. How detailed to make the chart? Excessive colour and use of three dimensions do not necessarily

add to the effectiveness of a graph. Now let’s change the chart type itself. Notice that when the chart was created, the screen was left in the Design tab, under the Chart Tools contextual tab, as shown in the screenshot above. If you’re not still there, just click on the graph, and you should be back in the Design View.

By clicking on the Change Chart Type button you obtain a gallery of different charts to try, as shown on the right here.

Using the same data, create a different chart.

Then add some text to it by switching from the Chart Tools/Design tab to the Chart Tools/Layout tab, click the Text Box button (in the Layout/Insert group) and then click in an open space on the chart, and you’ll get a box in which to add some text to the chart, as I’ve done in this last one here.

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Another useful type of chart is a scatterplot. We can learn a few useful keyboard shortcuts while creating and then graphing two adjacent columns of data. Save your worksheet with a new name, such as Two Columns of Data. Clear all the contents of the worksheet: Select the graph and hit the Delete key (do use the keyboard this time). Then Select All by clicking the cell where row and column headers

intersect (shown right). You can do the same thing using Ctrl A Use the key combination Alt E A A to clear the sheet. (See the Appendix,

later, for more keyboard shortcuts.) Now you can create two columns of numbers (using the fill handle again): Enter two pairs of numbers, next to each other, similar to the ones shown just above Select them as a block Place the cursor over the lower right corner of the selection, until the cursor becomes a small

cross (the “fill handle”) Then drag down, using the fill handle. Notice that the result is two arithmetic series (each number has the same interval added to it as existed between the initial pair of numbers). This trick can be very useful when creating number tables.

Now graph them: Select the top left number Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys together, Then press the down-arrow key Keeping the Ctrl and Shift held down, then hit the right-arrow key. You should now have selected the whole block without having to run all over the place to reach the end (as you might with real large datasets). Go Insert tab/Charts/Scatter (choose a scatter chart that has lines) Use Ctrl Z to eliminate the chart, and this time go Insert

tab/Charts/Line. Now you should get two lines, treating each column as a separate series. As you can see, the charting capabilities are much more extensive than this short preview can show. Remember to retain an exploratory approach to Excel, and in time you

will find it repays you greatly, both in your studies, and beyond. Thank you for your attention. Now that you have finished this note, if you have any outstanding questions, or would like to suggest improvements that could help make these notes more useful, please feel free to email me with queries or suggestions: pellis@london.edu

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Appendix I – Summary of Excel Tips and Tricks

General (Introduction and Learning Aims) Develop an exploratory (trial & error) approach to continuously extending your Excel skills. When you get stuck, look carefully at the screen for clues; let the cursor rest on items, to see some of the descriptive labels that pop up; if still stuck, try Excel Help via File/Help, the F1 function key, or the blue button

.

To find the older familiar Excel2003 menu entries you can Google (or again go via Excel Help to find) “Learn where menu and toolbar commands are in office 2010 and related products” resulting in a downloadable interactive menu that shows where the Excel2003 menus are to be found in Excel2010. Many key combinations from earlier versions of Excel still work in Excel2010 Navigating an Excel Spreadsheet [Mouse] Good for longer moves, unless a direct key combination exists (e.g. End or Ctrl with arrows; below) TIP To move the cursor to the end of a long strip of cells (e.g. if the far edge is not on screen), select a cell

at one end of the row or column, and use Ctrl Arrow, in the desired direction. Home key Moves cursor to left edge of worksheet (strictly, to the edge of the current pane of the

worksheet, if View/Freeze panes has been applied in order to leave headings at top and left edge fixed in place; try it!)

Ctrl Home Usually moves from anywhere to A1, the “Home” cell, except through Freeze Panes (as

above) Ctrl Tab (i.e. Tab = key above Caps Lock) Cycles through all open workbooks in the same ‘instance’

of Excel’ (i.e. additional copies of Excel, opened by separate uses of Start/Microsoft Excel are not reachable by this route). Still very useful if all open Excel files were opened in the same Excel ‘instance’, e.g. via File/Open or File/Recent.

Ctrl End Moves to furthest corner of a worksheet accessed so far, diagonally opposite to the Home cell Ctrl PageUp and Ctrl PageDown Move between the worksheets of an open Excel workbook TIP Naming specific cells, via the Formulas tab using Define Name … enables rapid movement via the

Name Box located to left of the Formula Bar (see p. 2; also the second set of notes: Excel Statistics). TIP After selecting a dialog box, it is often difficult to navigate around a spreadsheet, e.g. to navigate and

select cell refs. But if the box has the following style, click on the small coloured square, and navigation becomes much easier. Once cell refs have been selected, click the square once more to return to the dialog box.

TIP The above is only basic navigation – there are many other useful key combinations.

Putting Text in a Spreadsheet TIP Text will cross over cell-side boundaries into blank cells, until it reaches an ‘occupied’ cell, when the

invading text will ‘subduct’ the occupied cell, until the occupied cell’s contents are deleted. Excessive numerics, however (including dates) will fill a cell with: ###########

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TIP Blank key responses can be due to a cell’s text-colour having been set to white, and can be spotted by

selecting the suspect cell and looking at the formula bar, or just changing the font colour! Inputting formulas (Working with Numbers/Manipulations and Changing Cells): Relational operators: = initiates a formula e.g: =A+B + also initiates a formula e.g: +A+B < less than > greater than <= less than or equal to (but not =<) >= greater than or equal to (but not =>) TIP Should you wish to display a formula in a spreadsheet, (i.e. as text), e.g. =A+B

then precede the ‘=’ sign with a single apostrophe: ‘=A+B (the apostrophe will not show on screen). The same works for a formula entered as ‘+A+B displays as +A+B

TIP To see whether a visible number is the result of a formula, (rather than being a constant) select the cell

and look in the formula bar (identified on p. 2) TIP To see all formulas in a worksheet, go: Formulas/Show Formulas OR much neater, go: Ctrl key

together with the ‘hockey stick’ key ¬ above the Tab key (at least, on UK PC keyboards) Arithmetic operators: + add * multiply - subtract / divide ^ (hat, key combination “shift 6”, between top-line ‘%’ and ‘&’ keys): signifies power (exponent) as in

x2 input as =x^2

AutoSum button (near right end of the Home tab) – totals nearest adjacent column or row of numbers TIP Beware of apparent numerals that are in fact formatted as text, e.g. when imported into Excel from

some other applications; they can’t do arithmetic, and can be cleared and replaced via Home Tab, Clear/Clear All (key combination: Alt E A A). More general methods are available by googling “Convert numbers stored as text to numbers Excel 2010”

Copying Values and Formulas TIP If you try selecting a large block of cells to the right or downwards, often the mouse will shoot off,

much too far. Avoid this by selecting a cell or cells at one edge of a block, row or column, and use Ctrl Shift Arrow to reach the end of the block. Or, mouse only: select from lower/right towards upper/left of the block; then you are likely to overshoot by far less.

Ways you can cut, copy or paste within Excel: Use the icons at the top of the screen ; Short-cut keys

Ctrl X, Ctrl V Cut and paste Ctrl C, Ctrl V Copy and paste;

Also consider the Editing group at the right end of the Home tab

TIP But also, after Ctrl X or Ctrl V: Alt E S gives Paste Special… which allows numerous (often very helpful) paste options, reached via the drop down under Paste at the left end of the Home tab

Short cuts: e.g. after Cut or Copy, paste information elsewhere on the spreadsheet by highlighting the cell at

the top-left corner of the desired location, and hit the Enter key.

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Manipulations and Changing Cells To change a selected cell’s contents: Edit or retype cell content; OR: edit it in the formula bar. Absolute and Relative Addresses Relative addressing: e.g. by referring to cell A1 in a formula located in cell C4, then the formula in C4 is actually referring to “the cell located 3 rows above and 2 columns to the right” (which changes correspondingly, on copying the formula from C4 to another cell, from which it will then refer to “the cell located 3 rows above and 2 columns to the right” of the new location) Absolute addressing: e.g. by referring to cell $A$1 in a formula located in cell C4, then the formula in C4 is actually referring specifically to “the cell located at A1” (which, on copying the formula to a new location, will still refer to “the cell located at A1” even from the new location). F4 When the cursor is placed in, or next to, a cell reference in a formula then, on successive presses, the

function key F4 cycles through e.g. A1 $A$1 A$1 $A1 A1 again to $A$1 etc i.e. Row and Col. relative Row and Col. both absolute Row (only) absolute Col. (only) absolute Row and Col. both relative again.

Changing Formats Change row heights and column widths by moving the mouse pointer until it changes to a double arrowhead, on the boundary cell of a Column header, or Row edge; then drag. See the Home tab, Cells group for a comprehensive range of Format options via its drop-down arrow, especially the Format Cells…dealing with all the number categories (currency, dates etc.) as well as fonts, borders and more TIP Alt E D Delete selected item (e.g. a block of cells, a whole row or a whole column.) TIP Alt E A A Clears cells completely, including colouring (except for objects like graphs)

NB Graphs etc. need to be selected and deleted as a whole, sometimes by dragging a corner diagonally until the object is shrunk to a minimum, then hit the Delete key.

Printing The options for printing depend on both Excel and the printer options, which occasionally can interact in unexpected way.

Ctrl Z ( = Edit/Undo) One of the most useful tricks of all

Ctrl Y ( = Edit/Repeat) Another very useful keyboard shortcut

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Appendix II – Excel Error Messages and Help

Troubleshoot formulas and error values If a formula cannot properly evaluate a result, Microsoft Excel will display an error value. For example, error values can be the result of using text where a formula expects a numeric value, deleting a cell that is referenced by a formula, or using a cell that is not wide enough to display the result. Error values might not be caused by the formula itself. For example, if a formula shows #N/A or #VALUE!, a cell referenced by the formula may contain the error. You can locate cells that provide error values to other formulas by using the auditing tools. (See Help to Learn about locating cells that cause errors.) Brief summary of main Excel error messages, for Excel Workshop: ###### Number has too many digits for the cell – widen the column or reduce the

number of digits by reformatting the cell contents #DIV/0! Division by zero, or by blank cell, attempted – correct source, or if not fatal, hide it: If B5 holds the divisor, and A5 the dividend, use =IF(B5=0,” ”,A5/B5).

(See also the accompanying Simple_functions_in_Excel2010.xlsx for IF function)

#N/A Occurs when a value is not available to a function or formula. Click the cell

that displays the error, click the button that appears , and then click Trace Error if it appears.

#NAME? Name in a formula not recognised (i.e. “Range-names” can refer to data), or misspelling a function, omitting punctuation in a formula…

#NUM! Inappropriate input type or value in a formula – e.g. value out of valid range #REF Cell reference invalid – usually after inserting or deleting rows or columns –

try “undo” (Ctrl Z or Edit/Undo) #VALUE! Usually when text entered for a formula requiring a number or logical value

(true or false). I have an error in my formula Microsoft Excel corrects the most common errors you encounter as you enter formulas into your

worksheet, via the Autocorrect Options button . If you still can’t find the correction, after putting Formula Autocorrect into the Excel Help search box via, , then try one of the following: Match all open and close parentheses Make sure all parentheses are part of a matching pair. When you create a formula, Excel displays parentheses in colour as they are entered. Use a colon to indicate a range When you refer to a range of cells, use a colon (:) to separate the reference to the first cell in the range and the reference to the last cell in the range. Learn about operators in formulas via the Excel Help search box. Enter all required arguments Many functions have one or more required inputs called ‘arguments’. Also, make sure you have not entered too many arguments. Nest no more than seven functions You can enter, or nest, no more than seven levels of functions within a function. Learn about creating nested functions.. Enclose other sheet names in single quotation marks If the formula refers to values or cells on other worksheets or workbooks and the name of the other workbook or a worksheet contains a non-alphabetical character, you must enclose its name within single quotation marks ( ' ). Learn about using formulas to calculate values on other worksheets and workbooks. Include the path to external workbooks Make sure each external reference contains a workbook name and the path to the workbook. Learn about using formulas to calculate values on other worksheets and workbooks. Enter numbers without formatting Do not format numbers as you enter them in formulas. For example, even if the value you want to enter is $1,000, enter 1000 in the formula. How to change the format for numbers, dates and times. For more information Search on “Find and correct errors in formulas” in Google or Bing.

MS EXCEL2010 File Tab – Options Menu and Add-ins

MS EXCEL2007 File Tab – for comparison ----------------------------------------------------- Much of the rest of the Excel2007 Ribbon is the same as for Excel2010

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EXCEL 2010 Ribbon – Expanded

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