Foundation Training Manual

Excel 2007
velsoft.com

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Foundation-Intermediate Courseware

Written by Kelvin MacDonald Published by Velsoft International Inc. Courseware Release Version 3.0

2006-2008 by Velsoft International, Inc. Notice of Rights

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Table of Contents
Part 1: Foundation Level............................................................................................................... 1 Section 1: Getting Started .............................................................................................................. 1
Lesson 1.1: Starting Out ........................................................................................................................ 2 Lesson 1.2: About Workbooks .............................................................................................................. 6 Lesson 1.3: Exploring your Workbook................................................................................................. 8

Section 2: The Office Excel 2007 Interface ................................................................................ 16

Lesson 2.1: The Home Tab .................................................................................................................. 17 Lesson 2.2: The Insert Tab .................................................................................................................. 26 Lesson 2.3: The Page Layout Tab ....................................................................................................... 32 Lesson 2.4: The Formulas Tab ............................................................................................................ 44 Lesson 2.5: The Data Tab .................................................................................................................... 49 Lesson 2.6: The Review Tab ................................................................................................................ 53

Section 3: Excel Basics ................................................................................................................ 56

Lesson 3.1: Working With Excel 2007 ................................................................................................ 57 Lesson 3.2: Basic Excel Features ......................................................................................................... 64 Lesson 3.3: Moving your Data ............................................................................................................. 71 Lesson 3.4: Smart Tags and Options Buttons .................................................................................... 83 Lesson 3.5: Editing Tools ..................................................................................................................... 88

Section 4: Editing Your Workbook ............................................................................................. 95

Lesson 4.1: Modifying Cells and Data ................................................................................................ 96 Lesson 4.2: Cell Formatting ............................................................................................................... 108 Lesson 4.3: Enhancing a Worksheets Appearance......................................................................... 119 Lesson 4.4: Working With Charts, Part 1 ........................................................................................ 130 Lesson 4.5: Working with Charts, Part 2 ......................................................................................... 163 Lesson 4.6: Using File Templates ...................................................................................................... 178

Section 5: Printing and Viewing your Workbook ..................................................................... 187

Lesson 5.1: Using the View Tab ........................................................................................................ 188 Lesson 5.2: Managing a Single Window ........................................................................................... 200 Lesson 5.3: Managing Multiple Windows ........................................................................................ 207 Lesson 5.4: Printing your Workbook................................................................................................ 214

Part 1: Foundation Level

Section 1: Getting Started

In this section you will learn: What Microsoft Excel 2007 is How to open Microsoft Excel How to interact with Excel How to close Excel How to create a new workbook How to open a workbook How to save a workbook How to close a workbook About Excel file types How to switch worksheets About the active cell How to select cells How to explore a worksheet How to use the zoom feature How to use the Help screen How to use Online Help How to use Offline Help

Lesson 1.1: Starting Out

Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful and widely used spreadsheet applications available today. Excels functionality and popularity have made it an essential component on computers in countless organizations, businesses, and other institutions throughout the world. If you are new to Excel, the extensive array of features and capabilities that it provides may seem daunting at first, but dont worry. The keys to becoming proficient with Excel a re patience, practice, and a solid foundation built on the basics.

What is Microsoft Excel 2007?

Microsoft Excel 2007 is the latest version of Microsofts famous spreadsheet application. In a general sense, Excel is a very powerful and flexible tool for organizing and analyzing data. Although Excel is often used for managing financial information, it is just as well suited to scientific data, sports statistics, or practically any other kind of information you need to work with.

Excel 2007 provides a wealth of financial, mathematical, and statistical functions that you can apply to your data. Excel 2007 also offers numerous formatting and presentation options that will help you create slick, professional looking reports. You can use Excel as a database, a graphing and charting tool, a means of evaluating complex formulas, and as a way of sharing data and collaborating with others. When you change data in an Excel spreadsheet, Excel will recalculate your totals, functions, and formulas accordingly. Excel 2007 is comprehensive enough to meet the needs of beginners and experienced users alike. With Excel you can perform a wide range of tasks, from building basic spread sheets to performing advanced data analysis. Excel can help you process, interpret, and extract meaningful conclusions from your information. If you start at the beginning and work your way up, it wont be difficult to learn and work with Excel at any level you want.

The Excel Interface

Once you open Excel 2007, you should see an Excel screen (also called a user interface) like the one shown below.

Tabs

Excel Title Bar

Spreadsheet Tabs

Status Bar

The largest part of the Excel 2007 screen consists of a grid like pattern of cells. These cells are indexed by letters along the top of the grid and by numbers down the left side of the grid. An individual cell is simply one of the small rectangles formed by the crossing grid lines. When the Excel screen is first opened, you should notice a heavy black border around the cell in the upper left corner of the grid. If you press the arrow keys on your computer keyboard, you should see the heavy black border move from cell to cell in the direction of the arrow keys you are pressing. This grid area is an extremely important part of the Excel program because it is where all of your data will be entered, organized, and displayed. If you hold the Ctrl key and press an arrow key, the black border will move to the extreme end of the row or column of cells you are in, according to what arrow you press. If you type numbers or letters at the keyboard, they will be entered into the cell that is surrounded by the heavy black border. You will also notice that as you move the heavy black border from cell to cell, the letter at the top of the grid above the cell and the number at the side of the grid to the left of the cell will be highlighted with an orange-brown color. This combination of letter and number can serve as a kind of name for an individual cell. For example, the cell with the heavy black border in the following image could be called C7, because the cells column is C, and the cells row is 7.

Every cell in your spreadsheet has a name that can be formed by a letter-number combination. This very important concept is one of the keys to controlling how your data elements will relate and interact with each other. Continuing on this note, one of the major improvements in Excel 2007 is an increased number of cells in your spreadsheet. An Excel 2007 spreadsheet contains 16000 columns and more than 1000000 rows. This means that there are more than 16000 X 1000000 = 16000000000 individual cells in a spreadsheet! Above the grid area of the Excel screen, you will see a region with several tabs, labels, buttons, and other controls. 4

This part of the Excel interface is what allows you to control, format, and edit the data stored in the Excel grid area of the spreadsheet. This part of the interface also gives you access to Excels automated features, functions, and other options. This is also where the tools that help you analyze, interpret, organize, and present your data are found. If you are familiar with older versions of Excel, you will notice that the new user interface in Excel 2007 has some significant changes. This is another major innovation for Excel 2007. In older versions, the large number of menus and associated menu options made many Excel features difficult to find and remember. This new interface is designed to be more intuitive to the user, providing even more functionality with less clutter and confusion. This panel of buttons and controls is called the ribbon interface. If you left click one of the labeled tabs (Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, View), you will see the buttons and controls in the tab change according to the word you click on. If you let your mouse pointer hover on a button or control in the new interface, you will see a shaded box appear. This box will show you the name and a brief description of the button or control in question. In the image provided below, you can see an information box for conditional formatting. This information was displayed by letting the mouse pointer hover over the conditional formatting control.

Try viewing the different controls available by clicking on each word. Let your mouse pointer hover over the individual controls and buttons in a tab to see information about them.

Lesson 1.2: About Workbooks

In the previous lesson, you received a brief introduction to Excel spreadsheets, cells, and the new Excel 2007 user interface. All of these concepts and more will be dealt with in greater detail as this manual proceeds. For now, the next topic of discussion is Excel workbooks. As you already know, a spreadsheet (sometimes called a worksheet) consists mainly of a large grid-like array of cells that contain data or information. Essentially, a workbook is just a collection of individual spreadsheets. As a matter of fact, when you open Excel 2007, you are not opening a single spreadsheet, but rather a workbook that contains three spreadsheets. Take a look at the three spreadsheet tabs at the bottom of the newly opened Excel screen.

When you create or open more than one workbook at a time, the names of these workbooks will be visible in the task bar, normally located at the bottom of your desktop. The following is an image of a task bar showing that there are three workbooks available.

In this image, Book2 has darker shading than Book1 or Book3 in the task bar, meaning that Book2 is the workbook that is currently active.

About Excel File Types

When you start working with Excel 2007, it is a good idea to get a feel for some basic Excel 2007 file types and extensions. Excel 2007 uses a new file format known as Microsoft Excel XML format. XML (extensible markup language) is a type of mark-up language that looks something like HTML, but is designed more for the communication of information rather than the presentation of information. XML has been incorporated into the Office 2007 file formatting system to facilitate communication of data between Microsoft Office programs and other applications. Because of this file format change, Excel 2007 file types are different from the file types of previous versions of Excel. You should have no problems using Excel 2007 to open and work with files created with earlier versions of Excel. If you find that you cant use Excel 2007 files with earlier versions of Office, like Office XP or Office 2007, you may require a software patch available from Microsoft Office Online or Microsoft Update. When you are saving a workbook file with Excel 2007, you can specify Excel 97-2007 Workbook as the file type by using the Save As type drop list in the Save As dialog box. This can be helpful if you are worried about compatibility with earlier versions of Microsoft Office. In most computer systems, a file is normally identified by a file name and a three or four letter file type extension. Abstract.doc, for example, is a Microsoft Word document named Abstract. The three letter doc extension signifies that this file is a Microsoft Word document. The following table summarizes some of the file types associated with Excel 2007. xlsx xlsm xltx xltm xlsb xlam This file extension signifies an Excel 2007 workbook file. Earlier versions of Excel used the xls extension. This Excel 2007 file extension signifies a macro enabled workbook. This extension signifies an Excel 2007 template file. (Earlier versions used xlt.) This extension indicates that the file is a macro enabled Excel 2007 template file. This extension signifies an Excel binary workbook. This extension signifies an Excel add-in. An add-in is a type of program that adds extra features or functionality to Excel.

You may also see file type extensions like HTML, HTM, or MHTML associated with Excel files if they are being published as Web pages. These file types are most commonly used on the World Wide Web, or in help files that are to be viewed with a Web browser. It is always a good idea to keep your files organized by creating and naming appropriate folders to contain your files. You should also give your Excel files names that imply something about their content, like Budget03 or YearlyReport05.

Lesson 1.3: Exploring your Workbook

Now that you are familiar with the basic concepts of spreadsheets, cells, and workbooks, it is time to learn how to explore and navigate your workbooks in greater detail. In this lesson, you will learn how to switch between worksheets in a workbook, how to select cells in a worksheet, how to move around in a worksheet, how to use the active cell, and how to use Excels zoom feature.

Using Worksheets
A workbook is just a collection of worksheets. If you look near the bottom of the Excel screen you will see a group of worksheet tabs.

These tabs are labeled with the names of worksheets (spreadsheets) belonging to the current workbook. You can easily switch between worksheets by left clicking on the tab of the worksheet that you want to view. The name of the worksheet that you are presently working with will be in bold type, and the tab itself will have slightly less shading. In the image shown here, Sheet2 is the worksheet that is currently being used. You can also use the worksheet navigation buttons just to the left of the worksheet tabs to switch between worksheets. This technique is especially useful if you have so many worksheets that the worksheet tabs cannot all be displayed. Simply right click on one of the arrow buttons, (just to the left of the sheet tabs), and you will see a list of the worksheets available in your workbook.

You can then switch to a particular worksheet by clicking on its name in the list.

You can also quickly add a new worksheet (spreadsheet) to the workbook, by clicking the new sheet button.

If you right click on any worksheet tab, you will see a menu with several options.

You can use these options to insert, delete, or even rename a worksheet.

If you display the sub menu for the Tab Color option, you can specify a color for the tab of the worksheet in question.

Here, the worksheet names have been changed, as well as the tab colors. To quickly switch between workbooks using the keyboard, use the Ctrl +Page Up and Ctrl + Page Down keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl + Page Up will move to the next worksheet to the right, (relative to the worksheet tabs), while Ctrl + Page Down will move to the next worksheet to the left.

The Active Cell

When you left click on a cell in an Excel worksheet, it becomes enhanced with a thicker border. You will also notice that the number at the far left of the cell row, and the letter at the top of the cell column, will be shaded differently. The cell you have chosen is now the active cell, and its name or reference is the cell column letter followed by the cell row number (the number and letter that are shaded differently).

The active cell is G4

In this image, cell G4 (the one with the thick border) is the active cell. The column letter and row number of the active cell are displayed in a text field near the upper left corner of the Excel grid. If you enter a column letter and row number into this text field (a cell reference), the corresponding cell will become active. You can enter text or a number directly into the active cell. If you click one of the formatting buttons on the Home tab (such as bold, italics, underline), the formatting will be applied to the active cell. If there is already data in the active cell, the formatting option you choose will be applied to this data. In summary, to change the contents (formatting or data) of any individual cell, click on it to make it active, and then make your changes. 10

If you enter text or numbers into the formula bar, the text or number that you type will also be entered into the active cell. If you make a cell containing data the active cell, the data will also appear in the formula bar. You can even edit the contents of the active cell in the formula bar if you wish.

Selecting Cells
To select a group of cells, place your mouse pointer in the center of a cell. When the pointer turns into a thick white shaded cross, hold the left mouse button down and drag the pointer across the row or down the column of cells you want to select.

As with the active cell, the numbers at the left ends of the selected rows, and the letters at the top of the selected columns, will be shaded differently. In this image, the cells B2 to B4 have been selected. You can also drag the thick cross pointer diagonally across a block of cells to select multiple columns and rows. A block of cells that you select will be highlighted in blue, and surrounded by a heavy black border. You can also select cells by using the Shift key. Simply click on the first cell of your selection, press Shift, and then click on the last cell of your selection. To make the selection shown above, you would click cell B2, making it active; press Shift, and then click cell B4.

Exploring a Worksheet
It is not difficult to move around in an Excel spreadsheet. If you click a cell to make it active, pressing the Enter key will make the cell immediately below it active. If you keep pressing Enter, you will see the enhanced border move down the column from cell to cell.

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If you use the Up arrow key you can move to the cell just above. The Down arrow key will move you to the cell just bellow. The Right arrow key will move one cell to the right, and the Left arrow key will move one cell to the left. Using the Page Up key will move you up one full screen (grid of cells). Using the Page Down key will move you down one full screen. Alt + Page Up and Alt +Page Down move you one full screen left and right respectively. If you have a block of cells that contain data, pressing Ctrl + Left arrow will move you to the left side (beginning) of the block while the Ctrl + Right arrow will move you to the right side (end) of the block. Similarly, Ctrl + Up Arrow will move you to the top of the data block, and Ctrl + Down arrow will move you to the bottom. If the spreadsheet is empty, these same shortcuts will move you to the extreme left, right, top, and bottom of the spreadsheet grid respectively. Pressing the Ctrl + Home keys you will move to the top left of the spreadsheet grid. If your spread sheet contains data, pressing Ctrl + End will move you to the bottom right of the data area. You may also notice that on some Excel menus, you will see the first letter in a menu option underlined. This simply indicates that if you press Ctrl + the underlined letter on your keyboard, the menu option will be activated.

The Zoom Feature

A single Excel 2007 spreadsheet can contain more than 1000000 rows and 16000 columns. This means that there can be as many as 16 billion cells in a spreadsheet. This poses a problem for viewing large spreadsheets. How can you possibly get a big picture of your work if it is spread over a large number of cells? By using Excels Zoom feature, you can change the viewing scale of a work sheet. By default, a workbook opens at 100% zoom.

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In the image that follows, you can see that at the current zoom level, (100%), you cannot see the entire block of data.

Zoom slider

You could use the scroll bars at the right side and the bottom of the grid area to view all of the data, or you could use the zoom slider switch in the lower right corner of the screen. You can drag the slider with your mouse toward the negative (-) sign to decrease the zoom level, or toward the (+) sign to increase the zoom level.

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You can also left click on the current zoom amount (100% in the following image) to display preset magnification options, or to enter your own custom level of magnification.

You can use these options to choose from a preset zoom value, or you can select a custom value by entering it in the small text field provided. When you have made your selection, clicking the OK button will implement your choice.

This image above shows the Excel spread sheet zoomed out to 20%.

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The following image is of the same spreadsheet zoomed in to 320%.

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Section 2: The Office Excel 2007 Interface

In this section you will learn about: The Home tab The Insert tab The Page Layout tab The Formula tab The Data tab The Review tab

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Lesson 2.1: The Home Tab

In this lesson, you will learn about the Home tab and the different groupings that it contains: The Clipboard group The Font group The Alignment group The Number group The Style group The Cells group The Editing group

This tab contains the most frequently used buttons and features that Excel has to offer.

Clipboard
The Clipboard group is at the far left of the Home tab.

This group of buttons relates to the tasks of cutting, copying, and pasting items from one location to another. The clipboard is the place where copied items are stored until they are needed. The following table describes the functions of these buttons. Paste The top paste button (looks like a clipboard) will paste the most recently copied item from the clipboard to the location starting at the active cell. Items on the clipboard can be text, numbers, cell selections, and more. The clipboard can store up to 24 copied items. (Shortcut key: Ctrl + V) The bottom paste button (with the small down pointing arrow) will display a menu of paste options when clicked.

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Cut

This button will remove the selected item from its original location and place it on the clipboard for future use. (Shortcut key: Ctrl + X)

Copy

This button will copy a selection or other item from the spreadsheet to the clipboard. Unlike cut, copy will not remove the selection or item from its original location in the spreadsheet. (Shortcut key: Ctrl + C) This button will copy a specific format from one area, which can then be applied to another area. For example, you can select a group of cells and then click the Format Painter button to copy their format. You will then see a small paint brush next to your mouse pointer. When you select another different group of cells, the copied format will be applied (painted) to them. Clicking this button will display a task pane showing all of the items currently stored on the Office Clipboard.

Format Painter

Office Clipboard

If you click on any particular item in the Office Clipboard pane, it will be pasted to the location starting at the active cell. If you let your mouse pointer hover over an item on the clipboard, you will be presented with an option to delete the item. There is also an options button on the bottom of the clipboard task pane that will allow you to control some of the Office Clipboard features.

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Font
The Font group is next to the Clipboard group on the Home tab.

These buttons allow you to change a fonts type, size, color, and style. The following table provides a brief description of the functions of these buttons. Font Face This button allows you to change the type of font. Clicking the small down pointing arrow will allow you to select from a large list of available fonts. The scroll bar at the side of the font list will allow you to view all of the fonts available.

Each individual item in the list is depicted in its own font. Font Size Use this button and its associated list of sizes to change the font size. You can also enter a size directly by clicking on the area that displays the current size and then entering a new number. 19

Increase/Decrease Font Size

These buttons will increase and decrease the font size of a selected cell or cells by increments of one.

Bold, Italic, and Underline

These buttons will apply bold, italicized, or underlined effects to a cell or selection of cells.

Borders

Clicking the small arrow on this button will display a list of borders that you can apply to a cell or selection of cells.

Fill Color and Font Color

The fill color button (paint bucket) will fill a cell or selection of cells with the specified color. The arrow next to the button displays a palette of color options. The font color button (letter A) will color the text in a cell or selection of cells with the color that is specified. The arrow will display a palette of color options.

Font Group Button

Clicking the small arrow at the right of this button will display the font tab of the Format Cells dialog box, which provides numerous options related to cell formatting.

Alignment
The buttons in the alignment group control how data (text or numbers) appears in spreadsheet cells.

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The following table provides brief descriptions of the alignment buttons. Horizontal Alignment The Align Left button will align the data in a cell or a selection of cells to the left edge of the cells. The Align Center button will align cell data in the center of the cells. The Align Right button will align cell data to the right edge of the cells. These buttons will increase or decrease the amount of indent for the data in a cell or group of cells. The button with the left pointing arrow decreases the indent, while the button with the right pointing arrow increases the indent. These buttons align your data relative to the top, middle, and bottom of the cells.

Decrease and Increase Indent

Vertical Alignment

Text Orientation

This button will rotate the text in a cell to various positions.

Wrap Text

If there is too much data for the length of a cell, the Wrap Text button will display the data on multiple lines so that it is visible.

Merge and Center

This button will merge multiple selected (empty) cells into one larger cell. Data in the new large cell will be centered.

Alignment Group

Clicking the small arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the command group will display the Alignment tab of the Format Cells dialog box.

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Number
The Number command group controls how numerical values are displayed in cells. In Excel, numbers can have different formats including normal, number, accounting, scientific, fraction, percentage, date, and time.

Lets take a look at each command in this group. Number Format List Use this list to choose what format will be applied to a cell or selection of cells.

Currency, Percent, and Comma

Use these buttons to select a type of currency, a percent, or a comma separated number format for a cell or group of cells.

Increase/Decrease Decimal Places

These buttons will increase or decrease the amount of decimal places shown for a cell or selection of cells.

Number Group

Clicking the small arrow at the right of this group will display the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.

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Style
The Style group allows you to quickly apply table styles to groups of cells and individual styles to individual cells. There is also a conditional formatting control which allows you to quickly apply special color coding and other rules to cells conditionally (based on particular aspects or qualities of the data).

Conditional Formatting

This button allows you to create formatting rules based on conditions of your choice. For example, you can ask Excel to automatically color a cell red if the value in a cell is less than or equal to a certain number.

Format as Table

Clicking this button allows you to quickly format a selection of cells with one of several preset table styles.

Format Cell

Clicking this button allows you to quickly format a cell or selection of cells with any one of a number of preset cell formats.

Cells
The Cells group gives you control over inserting, deleting, and adjusting the size of a cell or group of cells.

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Clicking the small arrow on each button displays a menu of options corresponding to the button in question (insert, delete, or format).

As you might expect, the Insert button drop down menu allows you to insert cells, rows, columns, or sheets, while the Delete button drop down menu allows you to delete cells, rows, columns, or sheets. The Format button drop down menu allows you to change the height and the width of cells. It also provides options for hiding sheets, rows, or columns, as well as options for organizing and protecting your worksheets.

Editing
The Editing group provides quick access to some useful arithmetic features, filtering and sorting features, and a convenient search and replace feature.

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The small arrow next to the summation symbol () will display a menu of simple but useful mathematical formulas. The button immediately below this (with a thick blue arrow) provides a menu of options for continuing a pattern of data into another adjacent selection of cells.

The Sort and Filter button provides options for sorting in ascending or descending order, as well as options for applying filters to selections of data. Finally, the Find and Select buttons drop menu allows you to quickly find cells with formulas, cells with comments, or cells with conditional formatting or data validation rules. Moreover, there are also options that will display the Find and Replace dialog box, as well as the Go To dialog box. Dont be alarmed if you dont know what all of these features do. The functions of these tools will become clearer as you progress through the manual. For now, explore the Home tab and the other tabs by clicking on the words above the commands. If you let your mouse pointer hover over a button, an information box will appear with a description of the buttons function. You can also try using the help features to look up information on some of the features you find particularly interesting.

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Lesson 2.2: The Insert Tab

The next interface component that we will explore is the Insert tab. The buttons on this tab are used for inserting a variety of different objects into your spreadsheets. You can create professional looking charts and insert numerous eye catching graphics with this tab.

Tables
You can use the Tables group to apply table functionality and formatting to a selection of data.

The Pivot Table button will allow you to apply a PivotTable to a selection of data. A PivotTable lets you investigate relationships and dependencies in your data. The Table button will allow you to apply a standard table to your data. These tables can help you organize, sort, and filter data based on criteria that you create. When you click these buttons, a Create Table or Create Pivot Table dialog box will appear (depending on which button you click). In these dialog boxes, you can specify the cell ranges that your table will apply to.

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Charts
Excel has always been known for its extensive charting features. This legacy is certainly continued with Excel 2007.

Each button in the Chart group will display a menu of possible charts belonging to the chart type represented by the button. There are a number of different charts that you can choose from, including, line charts, pie charts, bar charts, area charts, and other charts. If you click the small arrow in the lower right of the Charts group, a dialog box containing choices from dozens of different chart types will appear.

The subject of charts will be dealt with in greater detail in lessons 4.4 and 4.5.

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Illustrations
The Illustrations group allows you to quickly add pictures, SmartArt, and Clip Art to your spreadsheet.

The Picture button (first on the left) allows you to insert a picture that is saved on your computer or an image from a scanner or camera. When you click on this button, an Insert Picture dialog will appear allowing you to navigate to and select images from the folder of your choice. The Clip Art button allows you to add Clip Art graphics to your spreadsheets. Clicking the button will display the Clip Art task pane.

With the Clip Art Task pane you can search for Clip Art in the locations of your choice (online or locally) by choosing from the Search In list. You can also refine your search by specifying the type of media to search for in the Results should be field.

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The SmartArt button allows you to select diagram and flow charting designs from a broad array of options displayed in a SmartArt window.

Shapes
At the left of the Insert tab, you will see a Shapes group.

To insert a shape into your worksheet, just click on an individual shape icon in the shape group and use your mouse to drag the shape into place on your worksheet as you require.

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You can add multiple shapes to a workbook and you can add text to the shapes if you wish. When you add a shape to a workbook, a Format tab will be available with even more options for modifying the shape.

Links
The Hyperlink button allows you to add a hyperlink to your spreadsheet. This feature can link to a Web page, an e-mail address, a file, or another location in the same spreadsheet or workbook.

If you click the Hyperlink button, you will see the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

This dialog box lets you navigate to a file on your computer, a place in the current document, or browse the web to find a target for your hyperlink. 30

Once youve entered your information, click OK to see the link in your spreadsheet.

Text
Finally, the Text group provides buttons for adding text boxes and headers and footers that will be visible on printed documents.

There are also buttons for inserting WordArt, signature lines, objects from other applications, and symbols that cant be found on your keyboard (such as mathematical symbols or characters from other languages). This image shows an example of some WordArt and a text box inserted into a spread sheet.

Remember that you can let your mouse pointer hover over a button to get a brief description of its function. You can also use Excels help feature to investigate any of the tools mentioned here.

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Lesson 2.3: The Page Layout Tab

The Page Layout tab allows you to change the theme of your Excel document, arrange the layout of objects in your document, and prepare your document for printing.

The Page Layout tab is a great help when it comes to enhancing the visual effectiveness of charts, tables, and printouts. In this lesson you will learn about the Themes group, the Page Setup group, the Scale to Fit group, the Sheet Options group, and the Arrange group.

Themes
The Themes group allows you to change the colors, fonts, and other visual effects associated with a given Excel 2007 theme.

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The Themes button will display a menu of preset themes when you click it.

Clicking any one of these preset themes will apply it to your document, affecting the color and style of charts, tables, and headings. The theme in the upper left of the menu (Office) is the default theme. Each preset theme is a combination of a color scheme, a font, and a visual style or effect. These individual theme components can be accessed with the other three buttons in this group.

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The colors and fonts buttons open menus with preset styles. Colors Fonts

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The Effects button will display a menu of visual styles that can be applied to your theme.

The following image shows a spreadsheet with the Civic preset theme applied to it.

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This next image shows the same spreadsheet and theme with a grayscale color scheme applied to it. (This was applied with the Colors button menu).

Page Setup
The Page Setup group is for laying out your workbook pages for printing.

The Margins button will display a menu that allows you to select Normal, Wide, Narrow, or Custom margins for your print out. The Orientation button will switch the printed pages from portrait (vertically oriented) to landscape (horizontally oriented). Sometimes this can help fit more data on one printed page, depending on the layout of your spreadsheet. The Size button lets you select the appropriate paper size for your print out.

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The menu under this button allows you to select letter, legal, executive, envelope, and other preset sizes.

The Print Area button allows you to set a print area, clear a print area, or add to a print area. You can use this button if you want to print only a specific section or area of a spreadsheet. Simply select the cells that you want to print, choose Set Print Area from the buttons menu, and then click the Print button on the Quick Access Toolbar. The Breaks button allows you to insert or remove page breaks. These will define the boundaries of your printed pages and are especially useful when your spreadsheet is so large that it requires several pages to print it all. The Background button displays the Sheet Background dialog box, which you can use to insert an image as a background for your spreadsheet. You can use the Print Titles button to specify column headings and row headings that will be repeated on successive pages as you print a spreadsheet.

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This button actually invokes the Sheet tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

Clicking the small arrow will display the Page tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

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This dialog is the central location for your page settings.

Scale to Fit
The Scale to Fit group of controls will let you shrink or scale your printed output to fit on a specified number of pages.

The Width control will allow you to choose a specific number of pages for your printout. This means the width of the information being printed will be adjusted so that it prints on the number of pages you specify. The Height control performs the same task as the width button, except that in this case, the height of the output will be adjusted to fit the specified number of pages. 39

Finally, the Scale control allows you to increase or decrease the scale of your printed output directly. You can click the small up and down arrows at the right of the button to change the scale incrementally, or you can double click on the actual scale value, and then type in a new value. Finally, if you click the small arrow at the bottom right of the group you will display the Page tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

Sheet Options
The Sheet Options group will let you add or remove the gridlines and/or headings from a printout or from the Excel screen.

Clicking the Custom Views button will display a dialog box that you can use to save the current display and print settings. (These saved settings are called custom views.)

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Clicking Add will display a second dialog box in which you can enter a name for your saved settings and specify what will be included in your custom view.

Arrange
The Arrange group is used to arrange various objects (such as shapes, images, or other graphic elements) in your spreadsheet. You can use the arrange controls to align, center, and adjust the positions of the objects in your spread sheet to obtain the look or effect you that you want.

The image on the next page shows three shape objects that have been inserted into in a spreadsheet.

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You will notice that the cylinder shape has been selected; we did this simply by clicking the shape. If you now click the Bring to Front button, the cylinder will be placed in front of the other shapes.

If you wanted to put it behind the other shapes again, you would select it by clicking on it and then click the Send to Back button. If you select all three shapes (by pressing the Ctrl button when you click on each shape) you can then click the Align button to display a menu of alignment options for the selected objects. Here are the shapes after they have been aligned middle (from top to bottom) and aligned center (from left to right).

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If you click the Group button (just beneath the Align button), the objects will be combined together as a group. In this image, the shapes have been selected together with the Group button, and then rotated.

You can also rotate an object or group of objects with the options under the Rotate button, or by dragging the green ball on the shape with the mouse pointer. Clicking the Selection Pane button will display a pane that lists all of the objects that have been inserted into the spreadsheet.

The highlighted items are items that are currently selected in the spreadsheet. You can select an item by clicking directly on it in the spreadsheet, or by clicking on its name in the selection pane.

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Lesson 2.4: The Formulas Tab

When you reach the point where you are doing advanced work with Excel, the Formulas tab will become very important to you. This is the part of Excel that provides access to Excel 2007s preset functions and to Excels formula auditing tools. Dont be alarmed if you know very little about formulas, functions, or cell references at this point. You will understand these topics more and more as you progress in Excel. The purpose of this lesson is to show you how and where you can access some of these features. The Formulas tab contains a number of important features designed to help you access Excels formula and function tools.

The first section of the Formulas tab is the Functions library. Functions are preset mathematical formulas or algorithms designed to perform a specific task. Excel 2007 provides a large library of functions designed to solve a variety of problems. In addition, you can create your own custom formulas in Excel, which may involve features like functions or range names. This is where the Defined Names section will come in handy. You may also have to audit (find errors in) a complex formula that you create. To help with this, the Formulas tab presents a Formula Auditing group. Getting a little familiarity with these buttons and concepts now will help you later on when it is time to work with them in depth.

The Function Library

As mentioned above, Excel 2007 contains an extensive library of functions that you can call upon to help you solve problems. These tools are available in the Function Library group.

The first and largest button is Insert Function. This button will open a dialog allowing you to search for and insert hundreds of functions. This feature is a key part of Excels powerful mathematical functions, and we will be looking at it very closely in the sections to come. 44

The next button is AutoSum. Clicking the top part of the AutoSum button will implement the AutoSum feature. This feature will add together the numbers that are in a column of adjacent cells immediately above, or in a row of adjacent cells immediately to the left of, the active cell. If you click the small arrow at the bottom of the AutoSum button, you will display a menu of basic automated arithmetical features. These include: Sum Average Count Numbers Max Min Compute the sum of a group of numbers Compute the average of a group of numbers Find the total number of numbers in a group Find the largest number Find the smallest number

Clicking the Recently Used button will reveal a menu of your most recently used functions.

Clicking the Financial button will display a lengthy menu of wide ranging financial functions for you to choose from. (You will have to scroll through the list of financial functions to see all of them.) You can use these functions to calculate future values, present values, loan payments, and much more. The Logical, Text, and Date & Time buttons will display menus of functions relating to these subjects. Logical functions deal with formal logic operators like and, not, true, false. Text functions deal with analyzing and arranging strings of characters (text). Finally, Date and Time functions provide current times and dates, as well as elapsed times between specified points. 45

The Lookup & Reference button will display a menu of functions for finding, referencing, and retrieving data elements in your spreadsheet. The Math & Trig button will provide an extensive menu of math functions useful in science and engineering. Last but not least, the More Functions button will display a list of additional function categories, such as Statistical, Engineering, or Information. Under each of these additional categories, you will find even more functions.

Defined Names
In Excel, you can give names to individual cells or groups of cells. In many cases it is easier to refer to a group of cells by a name you give them, rather than some abstract cell reference like A6:B12 (meaning all of the cells from A6 to B12).

The Name Manager button will display the Name Manager dialog box. This dialog box will allow you to create additional names for a range, edit the name of a range, and delete a range name. To create a range name, you can select a cell or group of cells, and then click the Define Name button. When you click this button, you will display a dialog box that has a field in which you can enter a name for your range and select a scope (the part of the workbook where the name will be valid) for your named cells.

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The Use in Formula button will insert the name of a range in your spreadsheet into the formula that you are currently building. The Create from Selection button will help you come up with a name by automatically generating one based on your row or column labels.

Formula Auditing
The formula auditing group can help you track chains of cell references and find formula errors. These buttons are useful for correcting complex formulas that have hard to find errors.

Trace Precedents Trace Dependents Remove Arrows Show Formulas Error Checking Evaluate Formula Watch Window

Shows all of the cells that feed data to a given cell. Shows all of the cells that are dependent on the results of a given cell. Will remove the arrows drawn by the trace buttons. Will toggle formula display or result display in the entire spreadsheet. Will find formula errors in the spreadsheet. Will calculate formulas. Will display a window that you can use to watch cells in one area of the work book, while you change data in another area. This is useful if changes to the data affect cells in another sheet or that are off screen in a very large spreadsheet.

Calculation
The main part of the Calculation Tab is the Calculation Options button.

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If you click this button, you will see a menu with options for how Excel 2007 will calculate the data in a workbook.

This menu allows you to specify automatic calculation, automatic except for data tables, and manual. If you select Automatic (the default), the spreadsheet will be recalculated automatically every time you change data. If you select Automatic Except for Data Tables, all data except that in tables will be recalculated If you specify Manual, you must perform an action to have Excel recalculate the spreadsheet. This is where the other two buttons on the Calculation Tab come in handy. Calculate Now Calculate Sheet Will calculate the entire workbook. Will calculate just the current worksheet.

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Lesson 2.5: The Data Tab

The Data tab is the part of the user interface that gives you access to Excels data controls. These buttons will allow you to import data from external sources, manage your data connections, merge and organize data, and more.

The groups on the Data tab are: Get External Data Connections Sort & Filter Data Tools Outline

Get External Data

The Get External Data group provides tools for importing data into Excel from other sources such as a database, a web page, or a text file.

To get data from a Microsoft Access database, click the From Access button. This button will display the Select Data Source dialog box. To get data from a web page, click the From Web button. This button will display the New Web Query dialog box. To get data from a text file, click the From Text button. This button will display the Import Text File dialog box. If you click the From Other Sources button, you will display a list of menu items that can serve as possible data sources. These sources include: From SQL server From Analysis Services From XML Data Import From Microsoft Query From Data Connection Wizard 49

The Existing Connections button will show a list of the commonly used data sources in the current worksheet, or on your computer. These external data features are often required for advanced Excel users, who use Excel to manage and tabulate data from external databases and other sources.

Connections
When your spreadsheet depends on data from external sources, you may periodically have to update or refresh the data so the data in your spreadsheet reflects any changes to the data in the external sources. The Connections group can help you do this.

If you click the Refresh All button, the data that is based on connections to external sources will be refreshed (updated so that any changes in the external data since the last time it was refreshed will be implemented in the spreadsheet). If your workbook maintains connections to external data sources, this action will keep your spreadsheet data current. If you click the Connections button, you will display all of the connections to external data sources contained in the workbook. The Properties button will allow you to manage how the cells that receive data from external sources behave (i.e. what happens if the external data source grows or if data is removed from it). The Edit Links button will allow you to edit the source for a particular connection.

Sort and Filter

The Sort and Filter group gives you finer control over how your spreadsheet data is sorted or filtered. Sorting is the process of ordering data based on some criteria, while filtering is the process of extracting data from a larger group based on some criteria.

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The two buttons to the left of the main Sort button will allow you to perform simple ascending or descending sorts.

Clicking the Sort button displays a dialog box that will let you apply multiple sort levels and other criteria to be used when sorting your data.

The Filter buttons can help you extract certain data from a much larger list or group of data based on criteria that you can choose or create. The sorting and filtering tools are especially useful for advanced Excel users who may use Excel as a simple database.

Data Tools
The Data Tools group provides even more features for controlling and manipulating your spreadsheet data.

The Text to Columns button can arrange a large uninterrupted block of text into individual data elements stored properly in columns. This can be a useful feature if you are trying to cut and paste data into Excel from another program.

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The Remove Duplicates button will attempt to remove redundant rows of data from your spreadsheet. Clicking on the button will display a dialog box that allows you to specify which columns are searched for duplicate information. The Data Validation button will allow you to specify what kind of data will be permitted in a particular cell or group of cells. You can also create an error message that will be displayed to the user if the information entered into a cell is invalid. The Consolidate button can help you merge spreadsheet data from different regions into one new area. The What-If Analysis button will display a menu with options for building scenarios using goal seek or using a data table. These features can help you explore what kinds of values are required to achieve a desired outcome in the context of your data and formulas.

Outline
The Outline group will let you organize your rows and columns of data into groups that can be collapsed or expanded. This is useful for large spreadsheets where you may want to temporarily hide data that is not important, or for reducing the size of a printout when only certain data elements are required.

The Group button will make a specified selection of rows or columns a collapsible group, while the Ungroup button will remove a grouping structure from a specified selection of rows or columns. The two buttons to the right of the block will collapse or hide groupings. Finally, the Subtotal button will automatically generate totals and subtotals for a specified selection of cells. The Subtotal button will also impose groupings on the selected data that correspond to the totals.

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Lesson 2.6: The Review Tab

The Review tab gives you access to the tools you need to proof and review your spreadsheets. The spell checker, thesaurus, and research task pane are all available on the review Tab. Moreover, the Review tab provides features for annotating your spreadsheets with comments. Perhaps most importantly, the Review tab contains a group that can be used to tighten the security of your spreadsheet.

The Review tab is composed of three main groups: the Proofing group, the Comments group, and the Changes group.

Proofing
The proofing group contains the Spelling button, as well as the Thesaurus, Research, and Translate buttons.

To check the text on your spreadsheet for spelling errors, just click the Spelling button. Like the spelling features in other Office programs, Excels spell check will offer a list of suggested spellings for any misspelled word that is found. If you click the Research button, the Research task pane will appear. You can type a term or phrase to search for, and then click the arrow button to search for information related to what you typed. The Thesaurus button will also display the Research task pane, where you can take advantage of an English, French, or Spanish thesaurus to find just the word you are looking for. If you click the Translate button, the Research task pane will appear again, allowing you to translate a word or phrase from one language to another. You can specify the word or term in the Search For text field, and then specify the languages to translate to and from with the respective drop menus. 53

Research

Thesaurus

Translate

Comments
There may be times when certain data elements or formulas in your spreadsheet need some explanation. Annotating a spreadsheet is a good idea if you intend on sharing it with other users. Your notes will help the people you share your spreadsheet with understand what is going on.

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The Comments group allows you to add comments and explanations to your spreadsheet as you see fit.

The New Comment button can be used to add a comment to your spreadsheet. You can delete a selected comment with the Delete button, or move between comments with the Previous and Next buttons. The Show/Hide Comment button will show or hide the comment associated with the currently selected cell. The Show All Comments button will show all of the comments that have been added to the spreadsheet. The Show Ink button will show only those comments that have been added via an ink device (such as a handwriting tool).

Changes
The Changes group is used to help guard against unwanted data modification and to track changes made to a workbook that is shared with others.

Protect Sheet

Will allow you to specify what actions can or cannot be performed on the worksheet in question. (If you wish, you can set a password that will be required for full change permissions.) Will allow you to guard against unwanted changes to the structure of the workbook. (If you wish, you can set a password that will be required for full change permissions.) Will allow multiple users to view and collaborate on a workbook at the same time. Will allow you to share your workbook and also add password protection so the tracking of changes cannot be turned off. Allows you to manage the change tracking options for a shared workbook. 55

Protect Workbook

Share Workbook Protect and Share Track Changes

Section 3: Excel Basics

In this section you will learn how to: Work with columns, rows, cells, and ranges Create worksheet labels Enter and delete data Print your worksheet Use the AutoFill feature Use the AutoSum feature Use AutoComplete Work with basic formulas Drag and drop cells Cut, copy, and paste cells Copy and paste multiple items Use paste special Insert and delete cells, rows, and columns Use undo, redo, and repeat Use Smart Tags Use the error option button Use the AutoFill option button Use the Paste Option button Use AutoCorrect Use Spell check Use Find and Replace Document a worksheet with comments

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Lesson 3.1: Working With Excel 2007

The main purpose of an Excel 2007 worksheet is to organize and analyze data. To accomplish this, you must learn to work with the basic structures found in every worksheet. You must also be able to enter and group your data according to different categories so your worksheet has meaning. In this lesson you will learn about the basic building blocks of worksheets: columns, rows, cells, and ranges. You will learn about worksheet labels and you will learn how to enter and remove data in a worksheet. Finally, you will learn how to print a worksheet.

Columns, Rows, Cells, and Ranges

Columns, rows, and cells are the most fundamental components of a work sheet. A column is a vertical series of adjacent cells from top to bottom. A row is a horizontal series of cells from left to right. A basic cell is an individual rectangle anywhere in the grid area of a worksheet.

There is a letter or combination of letters at the top of every column. Since there are only 26 letters, and far more than 26 columns on a spreadsheet, the next columns after column Z are indexed by the letters AA, AB, AC, and so on until the last column (XFD).

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At the far left of a row you will see an index number. The rows are numbered, staring at the top, 1 through to 1048576. The top left cell in the worksheet is indexed by the letter number combination A1.

Cell C7

The Active Cell

Column F Row 9 Excel is designed to have data organized down the sheet under column headings more so than across the sheet in rows. This is why there are over a million rows down the sheet and only about 16000 columns. In Excel, a range can be described as a series or block of adjacent cells. A range can be a very useful tool because it allows you to make changes (such as applying formatting) to multiple cells at once. To select a range, let your pointer hover over the center of a cell. When you see the thick cross, hold the left mouse button down, and drag your pointer to select a range. (A selected range will be highlighted in blue.)

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If you have a block of data in a worksheet, you can click on any data cell in the block, and press the Ctrl + Shift +8 keys. This will select the block of data as a range. Excel will use the empty cells adjacent to the data-filled cells as boundaries to the range. Still another way to select a range is to enter it directly into the Cell Name field. If you enter the range A1:A7 into the cell name field, the range shown below will be selected. Cell name field

You can also select a range by clicking on the first cell in a block that you want to select, then press Shift, and click on the last cell in the block you want to select. When you make a selection of cells, you should notice some numbers that appear on the Excel status bar. These numbers, located near the bottom of your screen, tell you the average, the count, and the sum of the data in only the cells that you have selected.

Creating Worksheet Labels

It is always a good idea to label or identify your data so that your worksheet can be understood by whoever uses it. It would be extremely difficult to make sense of multiple rows and columns of unidentified numerical data. Basically a label is a simple text description of the data it represents.

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For example, if your worksheet contains information about the age, height, and weight of a group of people, the words age, height, and weight, would make ideal labels for the data.

Label

Label

Entering and Deleting Data

Now that you understand the basics of columns, rows, ranges, and labels, it is time to start working with data. One way to enter data into an Excel worksheet is to click on the cell you want to use (making it the active cell) and enter the information directly into it. When you type something in the active cell, what you type will also be displayed into the formula bar. Formula Bar

Cell C2 is the active cell If you type text, numbers, or formulas in the formula bar and press Enter, the data or formula you typed will be entered into the active cell. When you enter data in the formula bar, you will see an X and a check mark next to the data entry field. If you click the X (cancel), the data in the formula bar will be cleared. Clicking the check mark will enter the data just like the Enter key.

To delete data from a cell, right click on the cell to display the drop down menu. Clicking the Clear Contents option will remove the cell data, but not the cell formatting.

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New data entered into the cell will be formatted like the previous data.

If you click the Delete option, a Delete dialog box will be displayed as shown. Note that in the sample below, the Shift cells left radio button is selected.

If you click OK both the data and formatting will be removed, and the data from the cell to the immediate right will be shifted left into the now vacant cell. If the Shift Cells Up radio button had been selected, the data in the cell immediately below would be shifted up into the vacant cell. Clicking Cancel will cancel the delete operation. You can also delete rows and columns by clicking the Delete button on the Home tab.

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Clicking the small arrow at the right of the delete button will display a menu with options to delete cells, delete rows, or delete columns. To delete rows, first select a row or rows. Then, click the Delete Button Arrow to display the delete menu, and then click the Delete Sheet Rows option. This will delete the row, and shift the below cells up. To delete columns, select the column or columns you want removed, and then choose the Delete Sheet Columns option. The columns to the right of the deleted data will be shifted left. Remember, clearing contents only removes the data, while deleting removes data and formatting. It is important to keep in mind that Excel treats text and numbers differently. A number is seen as a value in Excel, something that can be used in mathematical operations. Text is often used as labels or identifiers. If you want to enter a number as text (use a number as a label), put an apostrophe () in front of it.

Printing Your Worksheet

To print your worksheet, click on the Office menu and select Print from the menu items. If you let your mouse pointer hover over the small right pointing arrow (just to the right of the printer icon on the Office menu) you will see an option for Quick Print, which will print your worksheet using the default settings.

In addition, you will also see an option for Print Preview. In the print preview screen you can zoom in on your data if you need a closer look. This is done by clicking the print preview with the magnifying glass mouse pointer. You will learn more about printing workbooks and the Print Preview screen in Section 5.

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If you click directly on the Print option in the Office menu, the Print dialog box will be displayed.

From this dialog box you can choose whether to print an entire workbook, an active sheet or sheets, or a selection. Pressing the Ctrl + P keys is another way to display the Print dialog box.

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Lesson 3.2: Basic Excel Features

When working with spreadsheets, it is often the case that you must repeat data in a large number of cells. Excel helps you do this efficiently by automating some basic and repetitive tasks for you. In this lesson we will discuss some of the most fundamental and useful Excel features: AutoFill, AutoSum, and AutoComplete. In addition to covering these automated features, you will learn another key concept: how to work with basic formulas.

What is AutoFill?
Excels AutoFill feature can help you enter repeated or incremental text or numbers quickly. Say, for example, that you have to enter all of the years from 1990-2010 in a worksheet. Rather than typing each year into a cell manually, you can take advantage of the AutoFill feature to enter the data quickly and easily. By dragging your pointer down a column, you can make AutoFill enter consecutively increasing or decreasing values in adjacent cells by whatever increment is defined between the first two selected cells.

If you wanted to enter all of the years from 1990 to 2010 into the sample worksheet shown above, you can enter the year 1990 in cell A2 (under the Year label) and 1991 just below in cell A3.

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If you select both cells, and place your mouse pointer over the small black square in the lower right corner of the selection, your mouse pointer will turn into a thin cross.

If you hold down the left mouse button and drag the + pointer down column A, a small comment box will appear telling you what AutoFill is putting in each cell.

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When you see 2010 in the comment box, stop dragging.

The worksheet will now contain the years 1990-2010. Note that you have to select two adjacent data items, and they have to change incrementally for AutoFill to enter the correct consecutive values. If you selected only 1990 and dragged down the column, AutoFill would enter 1990 into every cell. Depending on what you want to do, however, this can work to your advantage. For example, if you select a single cell and drag the corner with the + pointer, AutoFill will fill the cells you drag over with the value in the original cell.

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What is AutoSum?
It is often useful to have totals or sums for the rows and columns of numbers in your worksheet. AutoSum can easily add all of the numerical data in a column or row.

First, make the cell immediately below the column of data (or immediately beside the row of data) the active cell. Next, click the Formulas tab and then click the AutoSum button.

The column or row of data to be summed will now be enhanced by an animated border.

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Notice that you can see the range to be summed in the active cell (C2:C9).

Press Enter and the total, 68, will be displayed in the cell.

What is AutoComplete?
AutoComplete will help you enter data by completing what you type, based on similar data in adjacent cells in the same column. If you enter the name John in a cell, and then type the letter J in the cell immediately below it, AutoComplete will fill in the letters ohn completing the word John. You simply need to press Enter to accept the substitution. If you have two words with the same first letter in a column of adjacent cells, John and Jack for example, and you type a J, AutoComplete will wait until you type a second letter to discern the most likely match to complete the entry.

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If you want to turn the AutoComplete feature off, display the Office menu and click the Excel Options button at the bottom of the menu. When you see the options screen, click the Advanced option in the panel on the left, and then clear the check box next to words Enable AutoComplete for cell values. When you click the OK button, AutoComplete will be turned off.

Working with Basic Formulas

Formulas are mathematical expressions that operate on cell contents. When cells contain numerical data, you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide the cell contents as your worksheet requires. The results of these operations will be shown in the cell that contains the formula. Formulas can be simple, like adding two cell values, or quite complex, involving multiple mathematical operations. 69

You can enter a formula directly into a cell or by using the formula bar.

Cell

Formula bar

When entering formulas, the formula should be preceded by an equals sign (=). Formulas can contain cell references (like A1) or raw numbers (like 23) or even functions (like Sum (B2:B9)). =A1+23, = D2-C2, and =B10+B11-C6 are all valid formulas. If you include a cell reference in a formula, and that cell reference itself contains a second formula, the second formula will be evaluated and the result will be used in the first formula. In this worksheet, we want to multiply Quantity by Price to get total sales.

When you enter the formula =B2*C2 in the formula bar, what you type can also be seen in the active cell (D2). In Excel the * symbol is the multiplication operator, so =B2*C2 means, the contents of cell B2 multiplied by the contents of cell C2. When Enter is pressed, cell D2 will show the result.

You can tell if a cell contains a formula by making it active. If there is a formula in the active cell, it will be shown in the formula bar. Formulas can contain multiple cell references from a single worksheet, or even references from different worksheets or workbooks. 70

Lesson 3.3: Moving your Data

The ability to manipulate your data is crucial to building worksheets and workbooks. To work with your data efficiently, you should know how to cut, copy, and paste single and multiple items. You should also know how to insert and delete cells, rows, and columns, and understand how to use paste special. You should also know how to drag and drop cells, and be familiar with Excels undo, redo, and repeat features. In this lesson, you will learn all of the concepts listed above, and as a practice exercise, you will copy and paste single and multiple cells.

Dragging and Dropping Cells

It is a simple matter to drag and drop cells. First, select a cell by clicking on it, making it the active cell.

When you see the thick black border around the cell, move your mouse pointer over one edge of the border. You will see your pointer turn into a four-headed arrow.

Now, hold your left mouse button down and drag the cell contents to a new location.

In this example, the value 200 was dragged from position A3 to position C3.

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If you select a group of cells, the selection will be surrounded by a thick black border. You can mouse drag a selection by grabbing this border, just as you dragged a single cell. You can drag and drop cells pretty much anywhere in the worksheet. If you drag a cell with a formula, the formula will move to the place you drop it. If you drag a cell that is referenced in a formula (a single cell, or a selection of cells) all formulas that reference the cell will be adjusted to reference the new location. Be careful when dragging and dropping in a worksheet. It is easy to drag and drop cells by mistake when trying to perform other operations.

How to Cut, Copy, and Paste Cells

To be able to move your data effectively, you must know how cut, copy, and paste cells. To cut and paste a cell, right click on the cell and select Cut from the drop down menu.

The cell will be surrounded by a dark and light flashing border. When you see this flashing border, move your mouse pointer to one of the borders edges and when it turns into a cross arrow, you can drag the cell to another location.

You will notice that the data has been removed (cut) from its original location (C3) and relocated in the place where it was dropped (D3). You can also right click on a cell, select the Cut option, and then point and click or use the arrow keys to move to your destination. When you select a destination cell, right click it, and select 72

Paste from the drop down menu. The data will be relocated in the destination cell and removed from its original location. Often, data needs to be duplicated in another area of the worksheet without disturbing the original cells. To achieve this goal, use the Copy feature. To use Copy, once again right click on a data cell, but this time select Copy from the drop down menu. The cell will once again have a dark and light flashing border.

Now move to a new location as before, by dragging, pointing, and clicking, or by using the arrow buttons.

The data will be pasted to its new location, and the original cell and data will remain unchanged.

Notice that as long as the flashing dark and light border is around the source cell, you will be able to paste data that you copied from it. It is also important to remember that cutting and copying moves formatting information to the destination as well as the data.

How to Cut, Copy, and Paste Multiple Cells and Items

Cutting copying and pasting multiple cells is a lot like cutting copying and pasting single cells. The important difference is that you must select a range of cells first.

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To begin, select a range of cells by dragging the thick cross pointer.

When you have made your selection, right click on any cell in the selected range, and choose Cut or Copy from the drop-down menu. The selected range will have a light and dark flashing border.

The next step is to select a destination area by dragging and dropping, pointing and clicking, or using the arrow keys.

If you choose a destination cell by pointing and clicking the mouse, or with the arrow keys, the selected block of cells will be copied so that the destination cell is in the upper left corner of the new block.

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If you cut a selection of data, it is just like cutting a single cell in the sense that the cell information in the original selected area will be removed (cut) from the worksheet. When you cut or copy items, they are saved to the clipboard. You can view the items on your clipboard at any time by accessing the Clipboard task pane. You can do this by clicking the Home tab, and then clicking the small arrow at the bottom right of the Clipboard group. Any items copied from other Microsoft Office applications like Power Point, Word, or Access, (up to 24 items) will be saved on this clipboard. You can paste items to your Excel worksheet (at the location of the active cell). You can also copy items to the clipboard from Excel, and paste them to another program like Word.

You can clear all the items from the Office clipboard by clicking the Clear All button, or you can paste all of the items on the clipboard by using the Paste All button.

How to Use Paste Special

Paste Special is a very interesting and useful Excel feature. You can use Paste Special to perform a lot of operations that might be awkward and tedious to perform using other Excel tools. Paste Special does more than just paste data. It allows you to use the values you will paste to perform operations on the destination cells.

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In this worksheet we have a column labeled quantity, a column labeled price, and a column labeled sales which is calculated with the formula (quantity * price).

Suppose that all prices are to be raised by 20%. You can manually enter the new prices, use a formula in a new column to calculate the prices, or you can use paste special. To use paste special for this situation, we would enter the value 1.2 (the numerical equivalent of 20%) in cell D1, then right click on cell D1 and choose Copy, giving the cell a flashing border.

Next, select the column of prices by dragging the thick cross pointer.

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When the selection is highlighted in blue, right click on the selected area, and choose Paste Special from the drop down menu.

This will display the Paste Special dialog box.

There are a number of options In the Paste Special dialog box that you can choose from. Since we want to increase the prices in the selected range by 20%, we want to multiply each price in the selected range by 1.2 (the value that we copied). To do this we would select the Multiply radio button and then click the OK button.

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Notice that the prices have now been increased by 20%, and Sales have increased as well, taking the new prices into account.

By using paste special, we have not copied the value 1.2 in cell D1 to the selected range. Instead, we have used the value to perform a multiplication operation on the values in the selected range. Remember, you must copy the value or values that you want to paste, creating a flashing light and dark border around the cell or range, and then select the cell or range that you want to paste to, before invoking the Paste Special dialog. Like the regular copy and paste operation, you can use single or multiple items with Paste Special. You can copy and Paste Special a single item to a single cell, a single item to multiple cells, and multiple items to multiple cells. With Paste Special you can choose to add the copied value, subtract it, multiply it, or divide by selecting the appropriate radio button. You can also choose to paste only values, so a formula will not be copied but its result will. Take a look at the options available to you in the dialog box, and remember, the default setting under the Paste heading is All.

How to Insert and Delete Cells, Rows, and Columns

Suppose you are building a worksheet with Excel 2007, and you realize that you forgot to include a row or column of important data. It could also be the case that a row or column of data is unnecessary or contains multiple errors and must be removed. Excel provides a simple way for you to delete or insert columns or rows if you have to.

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To insert a column in a worksheet, first right click on the letter at the top of the column. A drop down menu will be displayed.

Click the Insert option from the menu. Now, all of the data to the right of, and including the highlighted column, will be shifted one column to the right. In this example, the data in column B will now be shifted to column C, the data in column C to column D, and so on.

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Now there is an empty column where you can enter a new label and data. This procedure is essentially the same for inserting rows. To insert a row, just right click on the row number and choose Insert from the menu. All of the data in the row you selected as your insertion point, and the data in the rows beneath it, will be shifted down one row. This will leave an empty row where you can enter new data.

This is a worksheet just after inserting a row at position 8.

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It is also easy to delete rows and columns. To delete a column, right click on the letter at the top of the column and choose Delete from the drop down menu. All of the data to the right of the column will be shifted one row to the left, and the old information will be replaced with the data that was in the column to the immediate right. To delete a row, right click on the row number and choose Delete from the drop down menu. All of the data below the column will be shifted up one row, and the old information will be replaced with the data that was in the row directly beneath. To insert a cell, right click on it and click Insert. The Insert dialog box will appear.

When you insert a cell, the existing data must be relocated. You can click the radio buttons in the dialog box to specify how the data will be moved. Selecting Shift Cells Right and clicking OK will move the item in the active cell, and all the items to the right of it, one cell further to the right, leaving a blank cell at the original location. For example, the data in cell A1 would move to B1, and the data in B1 would move to C1 and so on, leaving cell A1 empty. Selecting Shift Cells Down will perform a similar operation, but in the direction of the bottom of the worksheet. For example, if you inserted a cell at location B1, the data in B1 would shift to B2 and the Data in B2 would shift to B3, and so on, leaving B1 empty. The Entire Row or Entire Column options allow you to insert a row or a column as previously discussed.

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Lets look at an example. Here is our worksheet before inserting a cell at C5:

After inserting a cell at C5 (shifting cells right):

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Lesson 3.4: Smart Tags and Options Buttons

Excels Smart Tags and Option Buttons can provide you with information and actions based on the context of what you are currently doing with your worksheet. In this lesson you will learn what Smart Tags are and how to use them. You will also learn about the Error option button, the AutoFill option button, and the Paste option button, and how they can make tasks easier. After covering these concepts, you will practice using the AutoFill option button to modify date entries in a worksheet.

What Are Smart Tags?

When working in Excel, buttons will sometimes appear based on the context of your current actions. These buttons will provide a menu of options related to the information you are entering or the action you are performing. A Smart Tag is a button that appears in response to information you enter in a worksheet. As an example, if you are working in Excel 2007, and you enter the letters XRX in a cell, a small purple triangle will appear in the lower right corner of the cell. This indicates the presence of a smart tag.

In this case, XRX happens to be the stock exchange symbol for Xerox Corporation. If you let your mouse pointer hover over the triangle a small button will appear.

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If you move your mouse pointer over the button, a drop down list will become available. Click the downward pointing triangle (list indicator) and a menu of options will appear.

If you have an Internet connection, you can click one of the Smart Tag options and receive online information about this company and you can insert information about the companys stock into your worksheet.

The Error Option Button

Lets say you are building an Excel worksheet like the one shown here, and you enter the formula =A2/B2 into cell C2.

Because cell B2 has the value 0, the formula =A2/B2 causes an error (division by zero is mathematically undefined). Notice that there is a small green triangle in the upper left of the cell. If you click on this triangle, you will see the Error option button.

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This button has a drop down menu that offers options to help resolve the error.

This is a good example of how Smart Tags and Option Buttons can provide context sensitive help. If you made another type of error (other than division by zero), the choices on the option buttons menu would change to reflect this error.

The AutoFill Option Button

After using AutoFill to complete a row or column, the AutoFill option button will appear.

Once again, options are provided that are dependent on the context of your actions.

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If you use AutoFill to complete dates, for example, the AutoFill option button provides a set of options that will pertain to dates.

The Paste Option Button

Another option button provided with Excel is the Paste option button. You will see this button appear after you perform the Paste command.

If you click the menu indicator on the button (small downward pointing triangle), a menu will drop down with options regarding whether the source or destination format will be retained, whether the cell widths will be adjusted, or if the cells should be linked.

Setting Smart Tag Options

You can configure Smart Tags by displaying the Office menu and then clicking the Excel Options button near the bottom of the menu.

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When the Excel Options screen appears, select Proofing from the panel on the left, and then click the AutoCorrect Options button.

When the AutoCorrect Dialog box appears, click the Smart Tags tab to see those options.

To make Smart Tags available in your worksheets, you should put a check in the Label Data with Smart Tags check box. If you change the Smart Tag settings, click the OK button to activate the changes.

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Lesson 3.5: Editing Tools

Excel 2007 offers a variety of editing tools to help ensure that your worksheets are accurate, free from spelling errors, and well documented. In this lesson you will learn about AutoCorrect and Spell Check, two features that can help you fix typing and spelling errors. You will also learn how to use Find and Replace, a great tool for finding and fixing mistakes. Finally, you will learn how to add comments to a worksheet in order to clarify and explain your data.

Using AutoCorrect
AutoCorrect can help you avoid common spelling mistakes and typographical errors as you type. Excel keeps a list of common misspellings called AutoCorrect entries. If you type a misspelling that is in the AutoCorrect list, Excel will replace the mistake with the correct word when you press Enter or hit the space bar. AutoCorrect also enforces rules such as capitalizing the first word in a sentence, capitalizing the names of days, and correcting two successive capital letters. You can modify the AutoCorrect options by clicking the AutoCorrect Options button from the Excel Options screen under the Office menu. This action will display the AutoCorrect dialog box.

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You can configure a number of AutoCorrect behaviors by checking or clearing the various options in the dialog box. You can also see a list of common symbols and misspellings, along with the symbols and words that AutoCorrect will use to replace them. You can add your own replacement combinations to this list by clicking on the Replace Text field, entering the text to be replaced, and then clicking on the With field, and entering the text to replace it with.

Using Spell Check

Spell check is an Excel editing feature that you can use to check your worksheets for spelling mistakes. It is much more comprehensive than the AutoCorrect feature, which is designed to quickly correct simple, common typos. When you invoke spell check, Excel will compare the words in your worksheet against a dictionary. If a word is not found in the dictionary, you can choose a substitute to replace it or add it to the dictionary so it will no longer be a spelling error. To spell check a worksheet, click cell A1 to get to the beginning of the sheet and left click the Spelling button in the left corner of the Review tab. (You can also use the F7 keyboard shortcut.)

If you want to spell check a selection of cells, just select a range by dragging the thick cross over the cells you want, and then click the Spelling button. You can also click on a single cell and click the Spelling button to check that cell.

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If the spell checker finds a word that is not in the dictionary, it will display the Spelling dialog box.

You can choose to ignore what has been found, replace it from a list of other words, or add it to the dictionary so it will not be interpreted as a mistake. You can also click the AutoCorrect button to enter the mistake and replacement word into the AutoCorrect list. If you display the dictionary language list, you will find several dictionaries that you can choose from. The dictionary you choose will be the one that the spell checker compares words against.

Using Find and Replace

You can search a selection or a worksheet for a particular word or number by using Excel s Find and Replace feature. To use Find and Replace, press Ctrl + F at the same time. You can also click the Find and Select button on the far right of the Home tab.

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Either action will display the Find and Replace dialog box.

Type what you want to find in the text field (note that the drop down list contains recently used search terms that you can select from) and click the Find All button or the Find Next button. If you click the Find All button, Excel will provide a list of cell references that contain the text or number that you are looking for. Clicking Find Next will take you to the next cell that contains the text or number you are looking for. If you click the Options button, the dialog box will present options for refining your search.

You can now choose to search within a sheet or workbook, or by rows or columns, by making selections in the drop down lists.

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If you click the Replace tab, you will be presented with the option to enter a replacement term for the one you are finding. (You can jump directly to this tab by pressing Ctrl + H.)

If you enter a term in the Replace With field, Excel 2007 will search for the word or number entered in the Find What field. If any instances of this word or number are found, they can be replaced with the replacement term. All that you have to do is click the Replace button each time Excel finds something. If you click the Replace All button, Excel will replace every instance of the word or number it finds with the replacement term, without waiting for you to click Replace for each one. You can use Find and Replace on a selection of cells as well. Just select the block of cells you want to search through, and then while the selection is still highlighted press Ctrl + H. If you right click on the worksheet tabs near the bottom of the Excel screen, you will see a popup menu. If you click the Select All Sheets option from this menu, and then use find and replace, the Find and Replace feature will search the entire workbook (every worksheet).

Adding Comments
Sometimes it is necessary to include explanations for data or formulas, especially if your spreadsheet is very complex. Comments allow you to place explanations or definitions where ever you need them in your spreadsheet. If a cell contains a comment, there will be a small red triangle in the upper right corner.

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If you let your mouse pointer hover over the cell, the comment will be displayed in a light yellow box.

Its easy to insert comments into your Excel 2007 worksheet. Just choose the cell that you want to add a comment to and click on it, making it the active cell. Next, click the New Comment button on the Review tab, or right click on the cell in question, and select Insert Comment from the drop down menu.

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A comment box will appear with a name (normally the computers owner) and a flashing cursor.

You can resize the comment box by moving your mouse pointer to one of the small circles on the outside edge of the box. When your pointer turns into a short double headed arrow, you can hold the left mouse button and drag to increase or decrease the size of the box. You can change the name to whatever you want by clicking on it and typing a new name. You can also click in the main body of the box and type the comment or explanation that you need. When you are finished, left click outside the comment box and the comment will disappear, leaving a small red triangle in the upper right corner of the cell.

If you ever need to edit a comment, just select the cell with the comment you want to change and right click on it. A menu will appear with options to Edit Comment and Delete Comment. Clicking the Edit Comment option will open the comment box for editing, while clicking the Delete option will remove the comment and the small red triangle from the cell.

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Section 4: Editing Your Workbook

In this section you will learn how to: Change the size of rows or columns Adjust cell alignment Rotate text Create custom number or date formats Use conditional formatting Use the Format Painter Merge cells Use AutoFit Find and replace formatting Add patterns and colors Add borders Work with styles Create charts Format charts Enhance charts with drawing tools Change the chart type Change the source data for a chart Work with chart axes and data series Create a chart template

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Lesson 4.1: Modifying Cells and Data

To make the most out of your worksheets, you should understand the many ways that you can modify cells and data in Excel. In this lesson you will learn about changing the size of rows and columns, adjusting cell alignment, creating custom formats, and rotating text.

Changing the Size of Rows or Columns

Sometimes it will be necessary to change the size of a row or column to fit the data contained in it. Or, you may want to change the size of a row or column just for the change in appearance. In either case, changing the size of a row or column is quite easy. To change the size of a column, place your mouse pointer on the line that divides the column letters at the top of the column you want to change. For example, if you wanted to change the size of column B, you would place your mouse pointer on the line separating B and C. Your mouse pointer will turn into a vertical line with a small arrow on either side.

When you see this pointer you can change the column size by holding the left mouse button and dragging the column edge to the left or right. 96

Now the size of column B has been changed. To change the size of a row, place your pointer on the line separating the row numbers at the left of the worksheet. When you see the pointer with a vertical line and an arrow on either side, drag the edge of the row to change the size.

In this instance, the size of row 6 has been changed by dragging the column edge between the numbers 6 and 7 downward. You can also change the size of rows or columns by clicking the small arrow at the right of the Format button in the Cell group on the Home tab.

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This will display a menu where you can choose a height or width option.

If you click the Row Height option, for example, you would see a Row eight dialog box like this.

Changing the value in this box will change the height of the selected rows.

Adjusting Cell Alignment

To align data within a cell, just follow these simple steps. First, select the cell with the data you want to align.

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Click on the alignment button of your choice in the Alignment group on the Home tab.

The data will now be aligned the way you want it. In this case the data was centered in the cell by clicking the center button on the formatting toolbar.

To align multiple items, select a range of cell by dragging the thick cross mouse pointer. Once the range of cells is selected, click the alignment button of your choice on the formatting toolbar. In this instance the left alignment button was clicked, aligning all the data in the selected range to the left walls of the cells.

You can also align single or multiple items using the indent buttons in the alignment group. Just select the cell or range of cells with the data you want to align, and then click the indent buttons to adjust the alignment in increments.

Note: Using the indent buttons may change the width of the column that contains the data.

Rotating Text
Rotated text can make your worksheets look better, improve organization, and improve readability. Rotating text can also make viewing or printing a large worksheet easier because the column widths do not have to accommodate the length of your text descriptions. 99

To rotate text, first select the cell or range of cells you want to rotate.

Once you have selected a cell or range, click the Orientation button in the Alignment group on the Home tab. When the menu is displayed, click the option that represents the type of alignment that you want.

You can also right click on any cell in the selected range and click on Format Cells in the drop down menu.

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This action will invoke the Format Cells dialog box.

To rotate the text in the selected cells, put your mouse pointer on the red diamond in the orientation field. Hold your left mouse button down and drag the diamond to the degree that you need.

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For example, if you want the text to be vertical in the cells, drag the diamond 90 degrees to the bottom of the orientation field.

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You can, of course, also set additional options on the left hand side of the dialog.

Click the OK button after you make your adjustments to implement them.

Creating Custom Number and Date Formats

Excel 2007 provides a variety of number and date formats for you to choose from, but it may be the case that you require something different. You can create your own custom number and date formats in Excel, to present your data exactly as you wish. To create a custom number format, select a cell that contains a number you want to format and invoke the Format Cells dialog box. You can do this by right clicking on the cell and choosing Format Cells from the drop down menu, or by clicking the small arrows in the lower right corner of the Font, Alignment, or Number groups on the Home tab.

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When you see the dialog box, click the Number tab.

You can see the number you are formatting in the Sample area of the box.

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To create a custom format, you must select Custom from the bottom of the category list at the left of the dialog box.

Once you click on Custom, you will see a text window containing a list of symbolic formatting codes underneath the heading Type. If you click on a symbolic formatting code, you will see what your number will look like with this formatting applied to it in the sample area above the formatting code list.

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Try clicking on different format codes until you find one that formats your number close to the way you want it.

Lets say that you want to format your number so there are two places after the decimal, and a dollar sign at the right side of the number. To achieve this, click on the #, ##0.00 format code from the list, and look at your number in the sample field. Now add a $ directly to the right side of the format code where it is displayed directly beneath the Type heading. The format code for your custom number format will be saved at the bottom of the format code list in the Format cells dialog box. Click OK to format the cell or range of cells with this new custom format.

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Here is the new custom number format applied to the cell.

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Lesson 4.2: Cell Formatting

When it comes to the quality and clarity of a workbook, layout and appearance play a major role. Excel puts an extensive array of formatting features at your disposal, letting you create practical worksheets with a professional look and feel. This lesson deals with some of the cell formatting tools that can help you present your data in a polished and meaningful way. In this lesson you will cover conditional formatting and the Format Painter. You will also learn about cell merging, AutoFit, and Find and Replace Formatting.

Conditional Formatting
In Excel 2007 you can design a worksheet in such a way that data is formatted differently, based on the values the data assume at any given time. This is called conditional formatting. This spreadsheet is conditionally formatted to highlight cells in different colors depending on the cell values.

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To use conditional formatting, first select a range of data that you want to apply the formatting to.

The next step is to click on the Conditional Formatting button on the Home tab.

This will display a menu of conditional formatting options. From this menu, you can choose: Highlight Cells Rules Top/Bottom Rules Data Bars Color Scales Icon Sets This will highlight cells that are greater than, less than, between or equal to values that you can specify. This option will allow you to highlight the top or bottom numbers or percent in the selected cells. Will display colored bars that are indicative of the value in the cell. This is what is used in the image above. Will use different shades of color to represent different values, from low to high. Will use sets of similar icons that will visually indicate a cells value. 109

You will also notice options at the bottom of the menu for creating a new rule, for clearing rules, and for managing rules. Each one of the conditional formatting menu options will display either a sub menu or a dialog box. In the image on the previous page, you can see the sub menu for the Data Bars option. As you let your mouse pointer hover over an option in the sub menu, you will see a preview of the type of conditional formatting that your pointer is on applied to the cells that you selected. To implement the conditional formatting, just click the submenu option of your choice. You can apply multiple conditional formatting rules to a group of cells by simply re-selecting the group, and then adding another conditional format by using the menu system discussed previously. The following image shows a group of cells with a data bar conditional format and an icon set conditional format.

The black and red circle icons represent low values, while the yellow and green icons represent higher values. You can also see that the size of the data bar in each cell corresponds to the given cells value.

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If you click the New Rule option near the bottom of the conditional formatting menu, you will display the following New Formatting Rule dialog box.

In this dialog box you can configure more precise and specific conditional formatting rules. The options in the Edit the Rule Description panel will change as you clicking the different items in the Select a Rule Type panel.

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As an example, here is a rule set up for cells that contain text starting with budget.

Notice how the options in the Edit the Rule Description panel have changed.

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If you click the Format button, the Format Cells dialog box will appear, allowing you to specify exactly what format you want for cells that meet the criteria you designed.

Remember to click the OK button when you are finished specifying your format.

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If you want to remove conditional formatting rules, simply use the Clear Rules option from the menu. This option will let you clear rules for selected cells or for an entire spreadsheet.

The Manage Rules option will allow you to delete, edit, or add new conditional formatting rules.

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The Format Painter

The Format Painter is a very useful feature that can be accessed from the Home tab. With the Format Painter you can format a cell or selection of cells with an existing format from another cell. To use the Format Painter, select a cell by clicking on it, and then click the paint brush button on the Clipboard section of the Home tab.

The cell that you selected will be enhanced with a flashing dark and light border and your mouse pointer will turn into a thick cross with a paint brush beside it. When this happens, any cell or range you select with the cross and paint brush pointer will assume the format of the cell that you selected your format from. In other words, you paint your selection with the format from the original cell. Lets look at a sample. Lets say weve formatted the Month cell a certain way, and we now want to copy that format to the Sales cell. First, well select the Month cell and click the Format Painter.

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Then, well click the Sales cell.

Now, both cells are formatted the same way.

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Cell Merging and AutoFit

Cell Merging and AutoFit are two Excel features that help you change the dimensions of your cells, rows, or columns. You may need an extra long cell for a heading, or you may need to resize your columns or rows so that long items can be displayed. Excel makes it easy to handle both of these situations with cell merging and AutoFit. If you need to put some text or a value into a cell, but the cell is too small to contain it, use the merge feature. With merge you can select a group of cells, either across a row or down a column, and combine them to form one big cell. To do this, select a group of adjacent cells and click the Merge button in the Alignment group on the Home tab ( ) These rows:

Become:

Now the group of cells you selected is merged together into one big cell. Data entered into the cell will have a center alignment. The merged cell can still be referenced in formulas by the column letter and row number of the cell in the upper left corner of the group that the new cell was merged from. You can also use AutoFit to ensure that your columns and rows will accommodate data that may be longer than expected. For example, when you see a string of number signs (########) in a cell, you know that the data is too long for the column width. 117

In this case, double click the separator line to use AutoFit.

The column will automatically adjust to fit the longest data present.

You can also adjust rows with AutoFit by clicking on the line between row numbers, just below the row you want to adjust.

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Lesson 4.3: Enhancing a Worksheets Appearance

Up until now, you have been dealing with formatting individual values or ranges of cells. In this lesson you will learn how to further enhance your worksheets appearance by applying colors, patterns, borders, and fill effects. You will also learn what styles are and how to use them.

Adding Patterns and Colors

To add colors to a worksheet, first select the range of cells you want to add color to.

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Then, click on the Fill Color button in the Font group on the Home tab to display your color choices.

You can choose shades of colors from the theme you are currently using (theme colors) or you can choose from a selection of standard colors. As you let your mouse hover over each color in color menu, the selected cells will be previewed in that color. When you are ready, click on the color of your choice from the color menu and the color will be applied to the selected cells. The range will now be shaded with the color you selected.

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The procedure to add patterns to a range is almost the same as for adding color. First, select a range of cells. Then, right click and choose Format Cells from the menu.

When the Format Cells dialog box appears click the Fill tab, select a color, and choose a pattern from the drop down palette.

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You can see what the pattern will look like in the sample bar at the bottom of the dialog.

Here is the spreadsheet with the fill pattern applied to the selected cells.

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Adding Borders
Borders can help to separate and distinguish selected data within a worksheet, or give a worksheet a more polished overall appearance. To add a border to your worksheet, select a range of data and display the borders option menu from the Borders button (on the Home tab) by clicking on the small down pointing arrow.

From the menu, click on the type of border you wish to apply to the range, and the borders will be added.

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You can gain more control over the borders by clicking the More Borders option on the border drop down Menu. This will once again display the Format Cells dialog box, this time with the Border tab activated. You can also display this dialog box by clicking directly on the Borders button.

Customize line position

Customize line thickness

Here you can customize a border by choosing line thickness and the line position in and around the cell. When you are finished building a custom border, click OK to implement it on the selected cells. Here is the selected data after borders have been applied.

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Working with Styles

A style is a set of formats that can be given a name, saved, and applied to a cell or a range of cells. You can create a style or modify an existing style to build the formatting options you need for your worksheets. Excel 2007 even provides a large menu of preset styles that you can choose to apply to your cells. To create a style, first enter some data in a cell and apply the formats (font color, fill color, font size, bold, italic, and so on) that you want to include in the new style.

Here, we have entered the word Hello, and selected bold, a font size of 12, a grey font color, and a shade of blue for the cell color. Next, display the cell style options by clicking the Cell Styles button, and then click the New Cell Style option near the bottom of the menu.

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When you perform this action, the Cell Style dialog will be displayed.

If you click the Format button, you will display the Format Cells dialog box. This will allow you to add pretty much any kind of formatting you want to the new style. You can also select or deselect elements to include in your style with the various checkboxes. If you just click the OK button, the formatting you added to the selected cell will be saved as a style. In the image on the next page, notice that the new cell style that was created is now available in the Custom section of the style menu.

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Applying your new style (or any of the preset styles) to a selection of cells is easy. Just select the cells you want to modify, and then click on your new style or the preset style of your choice from the Style menu. Styles are saved with the workbook they are created in. If you want to use a style from another workbook, the Merge Styles button will allow you to bring in the styles you need.

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To do this, you must have two workbooks open. Then, activate the workbook you want to bring styles to, and click the Merge Styles command in the Cell Styles menu.

That command will open this dialog:

In the Merge Styles box, select the workbook with the style you want and click the OK button. Excel will copy all of the styles from the workbook you selected into the workbook you want to 128

bring styles to. You will be asked if you want to merge styles if there are styles in both workbooks that have matching names. Once again, to use a style, select a cell or range of cells and choose the style you want from the Cell Styles menu shown previously. If it is a new style that you created, it will appear in the Custom region of the Style menu. To remove a Style from the Style menu, just right click on the particular style in the menu and choose Delete from the list of options that appears.

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Lesson 4.4: Working With Charts, Part 1

Sometimes it can be hard to discern patterns or relationships in your data from basic tables of numerical entries. Excel 2007s powerful chart tools can help you create a more meaningful representation of your data, by making it easy to build professional looking charts. In this lesson you will learn how to create, format, and manipulate a chart. You will also learn how to enhance your chart with Excels drawing tools and how to add titles and tables.

In the practice exercise you will create and modify a chart, step by step.

Creating a Chart
One of the major changes in Excel 2007 is the way that charts are created and handled. In previous versions of Excel, charts were often created with the chart wizard. In Excel 2007, a new approach is taken in hopes that a professional looking chart can be created in just a few clicks. Instead of a chart wizard, Excel 2007 provides a series of chart buttons and controls on the Insert tab.

Before you create a chart, first consider the type of chart that you require. Pie charts and bar charts are good for showing comparisons. Line graphs can be useful for showing trends and 130

plotting relationships between variables. If you want a really visually interesting chart, consider a three dimensional type. To create a chart, first select the data that you want to base your chart on.

Our aim here is to create a pie chart. To do this, we have selected the region labels and the sales data. The region labels will give us category headings for our chart and the sales figures will comprise the actual data for our chart. Once you select the data, you can proceed by clicking the Insert tab to display the Insert Tab. On the Insert tab, click the Pie Charts button to display a menu of possible pie charts. For this example, we will click on the Exploding 3-D Pie Chart option.

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This action creates an exploding 3-D chart in the spreadsheet, showing comparative slices for the sales per region.

Formatting a Chart
Even after you create a chart, you can still alter its appearance. The easiest way to do this is to single click inside the box (chart area) that surrounds the chart. When you do this, you will see the words Chart Tools appear in the Excel title bar.

If you click on the words Chart Tools, you will see the Design tab appear.

This tab provides you with a variety of quick and easy chart reformatting options. At the far left of the tab, there is a button to completely change the chart type if you wish. For now, we will only worry about changing the general format of the chart.

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To begin, if you right click on the chart legend and choose Format Legend from the pop-up menu, you will see a box appear around it, and you will see a Format Legend dialog box on your Excel screen.

Chart legend

In this dialog box, you can select any one of the legend position radio buttons to place the legend in the position specified. If you click the Fill option on the panel on the left, you will see options pertaining to the legend background fill color.

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As an example, if you select the Gradient Fill radio button, you will see options for fill gradients.

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If you click the Presets arrow, you can choose a fill gradient for the legend background from a drop menu.

Here you can see the results of selecting the top radio button for the legend position, and a gradient fill for the legend background. If you click in the area of the box that is close to the chart itself, you will see a second inner box surround the chart. This box defines the plot area of the chart. (In the image above, you can see a thin line forming a box that is inside the heavy outer box.) If you right click inside the plot area and select Format Plot Area from the pop-up menu, you will display a Format Plot area dialog box.

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You can use the options in this dialog in the same way as the Format Legend dialog.

Here is the same chart with the plot area formatted as a parchment gradient. Finally, if you right click on the blank white area of the chart (around the sales heading and legend) and then select Format Chart Area from the pop-up menu, you will display the Format Chart Area dialog box.

Just as in the previous two examples for the legend and plot area, you can use this dialog box to format the Chart Area. Just select a radio button for Gradient fill, Solid fill, or No fill, and then choose from the available options.

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The following image shows the pie chart from above with a solid fill color added to the chart area.

As mentioned at the beginning of this formatting discussion, clicking inside the box (chart area) around a chart will allow you to display the Design tab. In the Design tab, you will see a Chart Styles group that is fantastic for reformatting your chart. With these style buttons, Excel 2007 can provide professional looking charts in just a few clicks.

The styles available in the Chart Styles group have been carefully composed to use complementary colors, shading, and formatting. It is most often the case that a quick style will produce a better looking chart than manual formatting, and with less time and effort! You can cycle through the quick styles by clicking the buttons and watching your charts formatting change. You can use the scroll bar at the right of the group to display several more style options.

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More often than not, the quick styles buttons will provide a formatting option that you will find quite satisfying.

Here is the same chart that we have been using, after being formatted with a quick style.

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If you single click on the title of the chart, a box with a thin border will form around the title. If you then double click on the title, formatting options will be displayed.

You can use these options to align your title, bold your title, italicize it, change the font color, and more.

Modifying Charts with the Layout Tab

As you already know, when you create a chart in Excel 2007, there will be new tabs introduced on the user interface. For example, the Design tab (discussed previously) becomes available when you select the chart. You can use the buttons on the Design tab to quickly change the overall appearance and style of your chart. Another tab that can be very helpful when working with charts is the Layout tab. When you create a chart, and select it by clicking on it, you should see a Layout tab near the top of the Excel 2007 screen. Click the word Layout to see this tabs options.

The most important sections of the Layout tab (in terms of charts) are the Labels group, the Axes group, the Background group, and the Analysis group.

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To see how these tools work, take the following Excel chart as an example.

If we click on the chart to select it, we can then click the Layout tab to see what layout options we have for this chart. In the Layout tab, if you click on the Chart Title Button (In the Labels group), you will reveal a small menu of title options.

Currently the chart in this example has no title, so there are two options on this title menu that we can use. You can display a title above the chart by clicking the Above Chart option, or you can place a title over the chart by clicking the Centered Overlay option.

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Lets use the Centered Overlay title.

If we decide we dont like that one, we can easily switch to the Above Chart option.

Once you have chosen a title option, you can click on the words Chart Title to display a cursor. When the cursor appears, you can type whatever text you want for your chart title. You may have noticed a More Title Options item at the bottom of the title menu. If you click this item, a Format Chart Title dialog box will appear.

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This will allow you to change virtually every aspect of your title.

If you click the Legend button on the Layout tab, a series of options for modifying the chart legend will appear.

Clicking on any of these options will implement the particular style of legend described. You should notice that each legend option has a small icon showing the location of the legend in relation to the chart.

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If you want to apply labels directly to the data in the chart, click the Data Labels button.

Once again, the small images that accompany each option will give you a rough idea of what the results of the given option will look like. Here is the chart without data labels.

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Here is the same chart after adding a title and data labels. The chart was also resized by dragging with the mouse in order to make the data labels legible.

The Axes button will provide you with several options for modifying the chart axes.

Notice that there are two main options labeled Primary Horizontal Axis and Primary Vertical Axis. Each of these two main options contains a submenu of modification options.

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These submenus allow you to change the scale and numerical values used on the axis to coordinate the data.

The Gridlines button (also found in the Axes group) will allow you to add or remove Minor and Major Gridlines to and from your chart. You can add horizontal gridlines, vertical gridlines, or both if you wish. The gridlines will represent the axis units on the chart to give you a clearer picture of the specific value of the data at a given place in the chart.

Here is the same chart as before, with minor horizontal gridlines added.

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You can also add a data table to your chart by using the Data Table button on the Labels group in the Layout tab.

A data table will help to clarify the meaning of your chart by displaying the data groupings in your chart in tabular form.

The Trendline button in the Analysis group can be useful for pointing out a specific behavior or trend in your charts data.

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Under this button, you will see a number of options.

Once again, the image accompanying a given option shows a preview of what the option may look like when implemented. If you want to add error bars to your chart data (to show a range around the values depicted in the chart that the data may or may not assume) just click on the Error Bars button.

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Here is the same chart as before with 5% error bars added to it. The error bars show the values that the data columns could assume, if we have an estimate of 5% error.

If you are working with 3-D charts, the Background group has some useful and convenient options.

Lets take the following 3-D chart as an example.

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If you click the Chart Wall button on the Layout tab in the Background group, you will see options for showing or clearing the chart wall. The following image shows the same chart as above, with the chart wall cleared.

As you can see, the chart wall represents the back plane and bottom plane of the chart. These areas show the units that the chart data is measured by. (If you clear the chart wall, the data units and gridlines will remain, just the fill color will be removed.) The chart floor, on the other hand, represents the bottom or side plane of the chart, where the data labels are shown. Here is the same chart with the wall fill color added and the floor fill color cleared. This was done with the Chart Floor button.

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The orientation of the chart floor and chart wall may depend on the type of chart that you create. Here is a 3-D chart with the floor removed.

Here is the same chart with the floor added. As you can see, the orientation of the floor and wall of the chart differs from the chart in the previous example.

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When you are working with 3-D charts, you can also use all of the options in the Labels group and the Axes group.

This Labels group was discussed previously in the context of 2-D charts. The buttons and menus work with 3-D charts in a similar way. Here is a 3-D chart that has been modified with the Layout tab and Design tab.

Remember, the results you get when you use the buttons on the Layout tab may vary between chart types, different sized charts, and between 2-D and 3-D charts. It is usually fairly easy to undo a change that you make to a chart, so dont be afraid to experiment with the Layout tab.

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Manipulating a Chart
Sometimes it may be necessary to resize or even move your chart around in your spreadsheet. To do this, first single click in the chart area to display the chart area border.

If you place your mouse pointer on the corner of the chart border and let it hover, you will see your pointer turn into a double headed arrow.

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If you drag the chart corner with your mouse, you can resize the chart.

Dragging your mouse horizontally will resize the length of the chart. Dragging your mouse vertically will resize the height of the chart. Finally, dragging your mouse diagonally will resize both dimensions of the chart. If you look carefully at the sides of the chart border, you will see a series of four dots. If you let your mouse pointer hover over these dots, you will see a double headed arrow.

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You can drag theses side edges (with the double headed arrow pointer) to increase the length or height of your chart.

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If you drag the corner of the chart inwards toward the center, you will make the chart smaller.

To move the chart, let your mouse pointer hover over the one of the sides of the border, or over the top or bottom edge of the border.

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When you see your mouse pointer turn into two crossed arrows, you will be able to move the chart around your screen by mouse dragging.

Here, the chart has been resized (smaller) and relocated (dragged) underneath the data.

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If you want to make a chart an object in another worksheet, or move the chart to a sheet of its own, do the following. First, right click on the chart and choose Move Chart from the drop down menu.

This will display the Move Chart dialog box.

In this example, the New Sheet radio button has been selected, which will place the chart in a new sheet called Chart1. (You can enter whatever name you like for the new sheet.)

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After you are ready, click the OK button to move the chart.

The chart has been now been moved to a sheet of its own. Note that you can also click the Move Chart button in the Design tab to display the Move Chart dialog box.

This time, if you select the Object In radio button, you can specify an existing sheet to place the chart in. In this case, we will use Sheet2.

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As soon as you are ready, click the OK button to move the chart.

Now, the chart has been embedded as an object into the worksheet. To remove a chart from your worksheet, click in the chart area, and press the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard.

Enhancing a Chart with Shapes and Graphics

There are times when you may want to add additional graphic elements to a chart, such as arrows or callouts, to point out and explain important features.

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In a chart like the following, you may want to point out that cone number 4 shows the greatest percentage of profits.

To add a callout to the chart, click the lowest down pointing arrow beside the Shapes group on the Insert Tab.

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This action will display a large menu of preset shape options.

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Find and select a callout from the bottom of the shapes menu, and then draw it out by dragging with the mouse over the chart. (For our purposes, well use the cloud callout.)

You can enter text into the callout by right clicking on it and selecting Edit Text from the drop down menu. You can use this procedure to add as many shapes or graphic elements to your chart as you think are necessary.

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Lesson 4.5: Working with Charts, Part 2

This lesson will expand on the concepts covered in the previous lesson. In this lesson you will learn how to apply a new chart type to your source data and how to change the source data while maintaining the same chart type. You will also learn how to create chart templates and how to work with the chart axis and data series.

Changing the Type of Chart

What do you do if you create a chart based on your spreadsheet data and you find that it just isnt quite what you were hoping for? If you are using Excel 2007, it is a quick and simple matter to apply a new chart type to your data. To change the chart type, first display the Design tab by clicking on the chart area and then click the Design tab. Now, look for the Change Chart Type button.

If you click this button, you will display the Change Chart Type dialog box.

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With this box, you can select a new chart type or variation based on the data in the existing chart. For example, to change this chart to a clustered pyramid column chart, simply select Column from the panel on the left, and then click the clustered pyramid chart type from the column chart options that are displayed. After you make your choices, click the OK button to change the chart type.

Your chart will be automatically changed according to the selections you make.

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Here is an example of the new chart type.

You can also display the Change Chart Type dialog box by right clicking on the chart area and selecting Change Chart Type from the drop down menu that appears.

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Changing the Source Data

As you have just seen, Excel 2007 makes it easy to change the chart type for a given set of chart data. The great thing is that Excel 2007 also makes it easy to change the source data for your chart while retaining the original chart type.

In this example, the pie chart above is based on sales data per region. If you wanted the chart to depict Expenses per Region, you would have to change the source data of the chart from the sales data (cells B2 through to B5), to the expenses data (cells D2 through to D5). The first step in doing this is to right click on the chart area and click Select Data from the menu that appears.

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This action will display the Edit Data dialog box.

At the top of the dialog box, you will see a long text field labeled Chart Data Range. This will show the range of cells that serve as the current data source for the chart. To change the data source, use your mouse to select the new data range from the spreadsheet. As you do this, you will see the new range entered into the data source field.

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When you complete your data selection, you will see the new data range in the Edit Data Source dialog box.

The next step is to click the OK button in the lower right of the box. Now, you can see that the size of the pie slices have changed to reflect the new data.

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You may notice that now, having changed the source data, the title of the chart (Sales) is not accurate. To change the title, right click on it and select the Edit Text option from the drop down menu. You can now edit the text to change the title to whatever you wish. (In this case, the appropriate title choice is Expenses.)

Keep in mind that if you enter new data directly into the spreadsheet cells that serve as the data source for the chart, the chart itself will be updated automatically to represent the changes. You do not have to do anything special to update direct modifications to the source data cells.

Working with the Chart Axis and Data Series

In a typical chart, the axes are the horizontal and vertical scales that you use to coordinate your data. Basically, data is charted with respect to its numerical position along an axis. A series is a group of data (normally a selection of cells) that is to be charted against an axis. You can have more than one series represented in a chart to show how the different series (selections of data) compare to each other. To add more than one series to a chart, right click on the chart and click Select Data from the menu that appears.

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This will display the Edit Data dialog box. In this dialog box you will see buttons for adding and removing a series.

To add a new series to the chart click the Add button. This will display an Edit Series box where you can enter a name for the series in the name field that is provided.

Next, you can enter a range of data for the series by dragging your mouse pointer to select a range from your spreadsheet. (In this example, we are adding the sales data to a column graph that shows expense data.) You can enter data sources and series by typing a range directly into its field in a dialog box, but selecting with the mouse is usually simpler. After you select the appropriate data, click the OK button on the Edit Series dialog and then on the Edit Data Source dialog.

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Here you can see that two series (Expenses and Sales) are represented in the chart.

If you display the Edit Data Series dialog, you will see two names in the series section of the dialog box.

You can select either one of these series and click Remove to remove it from the chart. You can also click the Add button to add even more data series to the chart if you wish.

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In the following stacked line chart, the Sales data and Profit data are represented against a Y axis consisting of dollar amounts.

If you right click on one of the dollar amounts on the Y axis, you will display a drop down menu. From this menu, you can choose a Format Axis option.

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This will display a Format Axis dialog box.

In this box, you will find controls to specify the units and adjust the scale, tick mark, and position of the Axis labels. If you select a different heading from the panel on the left of the box (the heading highlighted in this image is Axis Options) you can change the line style of the axis, the shadow, and other aspects of its format.

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If you want to change the labels on an axis, invoke the Select Data dialog box.

You can see an edit button in the Axis Labels area (on the left) of the dialog box. If you click the Edit button, an Axis Labels box will appear, and you will be able to select the labels you want from the spreadsheet. Just drag your mouse to select the appropriate cells or manually type the cell range into the box provided.

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Here is the same chart that was shown previously, with its axis and labels changed.

A more convenient way to quickly select a chart layout is to use the Chart Layouts available on the Design tab.

With these buttons, you can quickly apply numerous layouts to your chart by clicking. You can also use the scroll bar at the right of the group to view more layout types.

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Here are a couple of different layouts for the chart. Both were chosen with the chart layout buttons.

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Saving a Chart as a Template

Once you get your chart looking just the way you like it, you can save the chart type, colors, and formatting as a template that can be reused to make on future charts.

Assume that this image represents a chart style and format that we are happy with and that we would like to use in the future. To save this chart as a template, display the Design tab by clicking on the chart area. On the Design tab, click the Save as Template button.

This will display a Save Chart Template dialog box; its virtually identical to the regular Save dialog. Just enter an appropriate name for your chart template and then click the Save button. By default, the templates will be saved in an Excel chart folder. When you want to use the template, just select a data range for the new chart from whatever spreadsheet you are working on and then click the small arrow at the lower right of the Charts group.

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This will display the Create Chart dialog box.

If you select Templates in the pane on the left of the box, you will see the chart template that you saved displayed on the right side. Just click the template icon to apply the template to the selected data.

Lesson 4.6: Using File Templates

A template is a workbook design or layout that can be saved and reused for any number of workbooks. A template can have formulas, fill effects, labels, borders, worksheet names, formats, and a host of other Excel features that will be applied to each new workbook that uses the template. This is an example of an Excel template.

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Opening a File Template

To open a workbook using a template, start Excel 2007, and then choose the New option from the Office menu. When you do this, you will display the New Workbook Dialog.

In the New Workbook dialog, you can select a template grouping from the categories listed in the panel on the left. When you click on a category option, the large viewing pane will display the templates available in the chosen category. If you double click on a template icon in the main viewing area, a workbook will open based on the selected template.

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If you click the My Templates option, you will display a New dialog box that contains templates stored locally on your computer.

If you double click one of the template icons in the My Templates view, a workbook will open based on the template.

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If you click the New from Existing option in the New Workbook dialog, you will display a New from Existing workbook dialog.

The New from Existing Workbook dialog has the same controls as the Open dialog and the Save as dialog. Basically, this dialog box will allow you to navigate to a location on your computer and use an existing template (or an existing workbook) to base your new workbook on. Once you find an appropriate source for your new workbook, double click the icon in the viewing pane to open it.

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Downloading a File Template

When you display the New Workbook window (by clicking the New option under the Office menu) you will see a variety of options listed under the From Microsoft Office Online heading in the panel on the left.

You can choose from business templates, calendars, finance and accounting templates, specialty papers, and more. When you select one of these online options, you will often see a list of template subcategories in the viewing pane on the right. This list of subcategories is actually downloaded from the Microsoft Office Online Web site. If you do not have an Internet connection, you will not see the list of subcategories and moreover, you will not be able to download any templates. If you do have an Internet connection, you can click on one of the subcategory options to see a preview list of downloadable templates.

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The image that follows shows some of the downloadable templates under the Budget subcategory.

When you see a template that you like, select it by single clicking on it, and then click the Download button to download the template. Once the template is downloaded, Excel will automatically open a workbook based on the template. You can also simply double click on the template icon to download the template and create a workbook.

Using a File Template

Probably the easiest thing you can do with an Excel template is use it. That is the reason why templates exist in the first place: to make it easy to build nicely formatted spreadsheets and workbooks. To use a template, start Excel 2007 and use the New window to open a workbook based on the template of your choice. (Refer to the preceding concepts in this lesson.) Once the workbook is open, the formatting and organization of your data will all be in place based on the template. The next step is to just enter the data into the spreadsheet as required.

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Here is a sports template after some data has been entered.

The whole purpose of the template is to provide a boiler plate format, organization, and style for your workbooks. All that you have to do is enter the data as required. When you save your work, make sure that you save it as a workbook. By doing this, you can create any number of workbooks based on the same template.

Creating a File Template

To create your own template, open Excel 2007and design your worksheet or workbook layout to meet any specifications you require. You can add labels, formatting, color, borders, and formulas. If need be, you can even create layouts on different sheets in the workbook, as a template can contain as many worksheets as you need. Remember, the main purpose of a template is for repeated use of a workbook layout. Keep this in mind when creating a template. Plan your layout, labels, and formats to make your templates comprehensive and complete. When you have completed your design, choose Save As from the Office menu to display the Save As dialog box. In the dialog, enter a name for your template in the File Name text field. Next, display the Save As Type drop list near the bottom of the dialog box and select the Excel template option. (You may have to scroll through the list of options to find it). This will save the file as filename.xltx.

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When you choose the Excel Template option from the Save As Type drop list, the Save In text field will automatically be filled in with the word Templates.

This means that your new template will be automatically saved in the Excel Templates folder. (You can choose another folder to save your templates in if you wish, but if you do, they will not be available when you click the My Templates option in the New Workbook window). Once you save the file as a template in the Templates folder, it will be available under the My Templates option in the New window. If you intend to use the template with earlier versions of Excel, save it under the Excel 97-2003 Template option for backwards compatibility. If you have a macro or macros in your template, save it under the Excel Macro-Enabled Template option. Rather than create a template from scratch, you can always download a template that is close to what you are looking for and modify it in Excel to make it suit your needs exactly. After you finish customizing the template; save it with a new name in your templates folder as described above. Simply remember to save it as a template rather than a workbook.

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Section 5: Printing and Viewing your Workbook

In this section you will learn how to: Use normal view Use the Page Break Preview Use the Page Layout view Use the Full Screen view Manage a single window Create a window Hide a window Freeze a pane Manage multiple windows Switch between open workbooks Arrange windows Compare workbooks side by side Reset windows Save a workspace Use Print Preview Use the Print dialog Use the Page Setup dialog Use Quick Print

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Lesson 5.1: Using the View Tab

In Excel 2007 there are a few different ways to view your workbook. These different views are designed to make certain tasks easier. If you are ready to print, for example, you probably dont want to view your workbook as a normal spreadsheet. If you do, it will be hard to tell exactly where your printed pages will begin and end. Sometimes, you may want to view a larger section of the grid area, or you may want to view several spreadsheet pages at once. The options for the different Excel 2007 views can be found on the View tab.

In this lesson, you will learn about the normal view, the page break view, the page layout view, and the full screen view.

Using Normal View

The first of the different views that we will discuss is the normal view. Basically, the normal view is the view that Excel 2007 will open with by default. The normal view displays the user interface tab, the Quick Access Toolbar, the tabs, the status bar at the bottom, and a reasonably large part of the Excel cell grid.

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This view is best suited for general work in Excel, because it provides easy access to many controls and features, as well as the working area (grid).

You will notice though, that in the image above you cannot see all of the information in the spreadsheet without scrolling. The chart beneath the data area is partially hidden. To overcome this, click the View tab near the top of the screen. In the View tab, you can see that the Normal view is currently selected. You will also see several other options for different views.

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You will also see checkboxes for Gridlines and for the Formula Bar on the View tab.

Clearing these check marks will cause the formula bar and gridlines to disappear from your Excel screen. You can get them back by placing checks back in the appropriate boxes. This View tab is the key to finding the Excel 2007 display that is most appropriate for your work. Of all of the views available on the View tab, the one you will probably use the most is the Normal view. You may notice a group of buttons in the lower right of your screen on the status bar. You can use these buttons to quickly switch between workbook views.

Starting at left, the first button will switch to Normal view. The second button will switch to Page Layout view, and the third button will switch to Page Break Preview. These buttons are useful because they will be available on the status bar regardless of the tab that is currently displayed at the top of your Excel 2007 screen.

Using Full Screen View

As pointed out for the spreadsheet shown previously, the normal view does not necessarily show as much of the spreadsheet work area as you would sometimes like. To see a larger view of the working area of the spreadsheet without having to scroll or navigate with the arrow keys, click the Full Screen button in the Workbook Views group on the View tab.

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This will reveal a larger view of the working (grid) area.

In full screen view, you can see the data and the entire chart. It is important to note that this is a functional view. That is, you can enter and modify data in the cells, and perform cutting copying and pasting actions.

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If you right click on a cell in full screen view, a menu of options will be displayed just as in normal view.

This menu allows you to choose formatting options from the small formatting bar, even though the Home tab is not available. As you can see, you can still insert comments, use paste special, and work with other options through the drop down menu, even though the tabs are hidden. To return back to normal view from full screen, just press your Escape key.

Using Page Layout View

Another great feature of Excel 2007 is the Page Layout view. This view will clearly show you the boundaries of your printed pages, almost like a print preview. The difference is that this view provides all of the Excel functionality that is available in any other view. You can edit, format, enter and delete data, add charts, and do pretty much anything else, all from within this view.

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To get to Page Layout view, click the Page Layout button in the Workbook Views group on the View tab. This will display your spreadsheet in page layout view.

In page layout view, you can see the breaks between pages that would occur if the document was printed. The Quick Access Toolbar, the tabs, the Office menu, and the status bar are all available in page layout view.

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If you adjust the zoom control toward the minus sign, you will see even more of your spreadsheet, broken into pages.

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If you click on the very edge of a page, you can hide the margins.

You can navigate between the pages by using your arrow keys to move amongst the cells. You can also see rulers at the top and left side of the screen, showing the dimensions of the pages. In the images shown above and on the previous page, the paper size is the default letter size of 8.5 by 11. If you change the size to any other size, the pages in the Page Layout view will be adjusted accordingly. (You can adjust paper size with the Size button on the Page Layout tab.) As a matter of fact, any changes you make with respect to page margins, orientation, and page size, will be reflected in the page layout view. This makes the page layout view ideal for preparing a worksheet or workbook for printing. When it comes to printing your document, you can use the page layout view to add headers and footers to your printed pages.

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To do this, just click on the page right it says Click to add header.

Once you click on this area, you will be able to enter a header for your printed pages. The situation is the same for footers.

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Here is a page layout view with the page size increased to 8.5 by 14, the margins set to wide, and a header added. Remember, the page layout view still retains all of the Excel functionality!

Page Break Preview

Excel worksheets can get very large. In fact, most real worksheets contain too much data to fit on one printed page. To print a large worksheet, you have to break up the data into manageable sections. The point where one contiguous sheet of data is broken into separate pages is called a page break. If you print an Excel worksheet that is too big for a single page, Excel will define page breaks for you based on the size of the cells, the size of the paper that your pages will be printed on, and the print scale you choose. However, Excel doesnt care very much about the meaning or interpretation of your data when it sets up page breaks. On a large worksheet, the data can be broken into pages in awkward, illogical ways. This is why it is a good idea to learn how to manage page breaks on your own. If you click the Page Break Preview button on the View tab, you will display an Excel view that shows page breaks in your spreadsheet as blue dotted lines.

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The solid blue lines indicate the boundaries of the printed page.

The Page Break view, though not great for actually working with your data, does provide functionality. That is, you can still edit, copy, remove data, and choose from menus in this view.

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This view is designed to help you organize your spreadsheets for printing. If you find that your data overlaps onto another page, but you would like to keep it on a single page, you can drag the blue dotted lines with your mouse to adjust where one page ends and another begins.

If you use print preview (which we will discuss in lesson 5.4), you can get a better idea of what this page will look like when printed, now that the page breaks have been adjusted.

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Lesson 5.2: Managing a Single Window

When you open a workbook in Excel, the actual working area (grid area with column letters and row numbers), is defined as its own region. That is to say, this working area is bounded by a border and can be minimized, closed, or resized independently of the Excel program itself. This self contained working area can be referred to as a window. In this image, you can see a workbook represented as a window within the larger Excel screen.

In Excel 2007 you can have multiple windows for the same workbook open at the same time, or multiple windows representing completely different workbooks open at the same time. In this lesson, you will learn how to create a new window, hide a window, unhide a window, and how to freeze panes in a window.

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Creating a New Window

In Excel 2007, it is easy to create a new window. If you have a workbook open, just display the View tab, and then click the New Window button.

This will create a new, additional window for the same workbook. In the following image you can see two task bar elements, one for the original workbook window called newtemp:1, and another for the new window called newtemp:2. (Excel will attach a :number to the name of the workbook for each new window you create for the same workbook. This is Excels default naming convention.)

Each new window you create will have its own minimize, restore, and close buttons in the upper right.

This allows you to minimize, restore, and close each window individually, though the window has to be active for these buttons to be visible.

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In addition, the windows can be individually resized by dragging their respective borders.

If you have two or more windows open for the same workbook and you change or modify data in one window, the data will be changed in all of the other windows as well.

Hiding a Window
To hide a window from view, click the Hide button on the View tab.

All traces of the currently active window will disappear from your Excel 2007 screen, but it is not really gone. The hide feature is great if you have multiple windows open, and you want to put a window (or a few windows) aside for a moment for less clutter, or perhaps to prevent accidental modifications or closure. Any hidden windows can be brought back to the Excel screen at your convenience.

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Unhiding a Window
When you hide a window in Excel 2007, the Unhide button on the View tab will become accessible.

When you click this button, an Unhide box will appear showing any windows that have been hidden.

To display the window, select it in the unhide box and click the OK button.

Freezing a Pane
It is sometimes convenient to be able to keep an eye on one part of a spreadsheet while simultaneously viewing other parts of the same spreadsheet (for example, keeping cells with headings in place while scrolling through the data). If you want to see multiple parts of your worksheet at the same time, you can segment your Excel 2007 screen into more than one viewing area by using Excels Freeze feature. To use Freeze, open a workbook window, and click the Freeze Panes button on the View tab.

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Clicking this button will display a menu of freeze options that you can choose from.

You can freeze part of your window based on a cell selection you make prior to freezing (the first option). You can also choose to freeze the top row, or the first column (the second and third options). This is useful as it will allow you to keep your column or row labels in place, while scrolling through your data. The other option in the View menu that is related to the Freeze command is Split. With this command, you can choose to break your window into four parts that you can scroll through independently.

This image shows a window that has been frozen based on a selection. The highlighted area of cells was selected and the Freeze Panes button was then clicked. Using the scroll bars on the 204

left and bottom will scroll through the bottom two panes and the pane in the upper right, but not the one that has been frozen (the one with the highlighted cells). If you select a single cell and click the Split button, you will break the window into four panes around the selected cell. The four scroll bars will now let you view each pane independently. This window was split around cell J10.

If you want to split your window into four equal sections, select cell A1 as the active cell before you click Split. To return your window to normal after a split, click the Remove Split button. This button will appear whenever you split your screen.

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To restore your window from a freeze, use the Unfreeze Panes option that appears on the Freeze Panes menu. (This menu item will only appear whenever you freeze your windows.)

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Lesson 5.3: Managing Multiple Windows

If you find that you frequently open a number of workbooks at the same time, Excel 2007 has some useful features that may help you manage your windows and workbooks better. In this lesson, you will learn how to switch between open workbooks, how to arrange workbooks, how to compare workbooks side by side, and how to reset a window.

Switching Between Open Workbooks

When you have multiple workbooks open in Excel 2007, it is easy to switch between them. First, if you can locate the names of your open workbooks in the status bar, you can click on a name to activate the corresponding workbook.

For example, clicking on newtemp in the task bar in the above image will make it the currently active workbook in Excel. If you click on the word othertemp in the task bar, this workbook will become the currently active workbook.

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If you can see two or more workbooks side by side in your Excel 2007 screen, clicking on the title bar of a given workbook will make it active.

When you click the title bar of a workbook in this way, it will become the currently active workbook and take the foreground of the Excel 2007 screen. Finally, you can use Excel 2007s Switch Windows button to switch between workbooks. This is especially useful when all workbooks are maximized and cannot be seen.

When you click this button, you will display a menu listing all of the open workbooks.

The checkmark in the menu indicates which workbook is currently active. If you click on any workbook in the Switch Windows menu, it will become the active workbook.

Arranging Workbooks
There is more than one way to arrange open workbooks in Excel. First, you can resize the workbooks as required by dragging their side and bottom edges. You can also move them 208

around the Excel screen by dragging them by their title bars. Resizing and repositioning the workbook windows by dragging with your mouse can be a useful technique, but if you tire of this, Excel also provides a means of automatically arranging your workbook windows.

If you click the Arrange All button on the View tab, you will see a box appear with a list of options for arranging your windows.

Tiled Horizontal Vertical Cascade

Workbooks will be arranged adjacently over the screen area (like tiles). Workbook windows will be arranged lengthways (like long strips) across the screen. Workbooks will be arranged lengthways up and down your screen, rather than across. Workbooks will be layered one in front of the other, with the title bar of each workbook visible.

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Tiled

Horizontal

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Vertical

Cascade

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Comparing Workbooks Side by Side

You can easily compare workbooks side by side with Excel 2007. To do this, click on the Compare Side By Side button on the View tab. (Note that this command will only be available if you have two or more workbooks open.)

If there are only two workbooks open, they will be compared side by side like this:

When workbooks are compared side by side, the scrollbars are used to scroll through both workbooks simultaneously. This allows you to compare the same areas in each different workbook at the same time.

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If there is more than one workbook open, clicking the Side by Side button will display a box with a list of the open workbooks for you to choose from.

The workbook you select from the list will be compared side by side to the current workbook when you click the OK button. When you are finished comparing workbooks, just click the Side by Side button again to return to your previous view.

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Lesson 5.4: Printing your Workbook

It is often the case that printouts of your workbook (or parts of your workbook) will be required for one purpose or another. This is especially true for the workplace, where hard copies of data are often requested. Needless to say, knowing how to print data from your workbook is essential. You have already seen how the Page Layout view can help you view your spreadsheet as separate pages in preparation for printing. Beyond this, there are a few other Excel 2007 features that can be a great help when it comes to printing your documents.

In this lesson, you will learn how to open Print Preview and how to use the print preview toolbar to set up print options. You will review the concept of quick printing and you will learn how to open and use the Page Setup dialog box.

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Opening Print Preview

To open Excel 2007s Print Preview screen, first expand the Office menu and click on the small arrow to the right of the Print menu item. This will display a Quick Print option (like the print option on the Quick Access Toolbar) and a Print Preview option.

The Quick Print option will print a quick copy of your spreadsheets, without regard to page content, margins, or any other special print set up details.

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For more control over your printing, click the Print Preview icon to open the Print Preview screen.

If you click directly on the Print button in the Office menu, or press the Ctrl + P keys, you will display the Print dialog box.

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Here, you can click the Preview button in the lower left to invoke the Print Preview screen.

Using the Print Preview Tab

Along the top of the Print Preview screen, you can see the Print Preview tab. On this tab you can find a Print button, a Page Setup button, a Zoom button, Next and Previous Page buttons, a Show Margins button, and a Close Print Preview button.

The Print button will print the document as it is shown in the Print Preview screen. The Page Setup button will display the Page Setup dialog box, which you can use to further refine your printed copies. If your spreadsheet has multiple pages to print, you can advance or go back through these pages using the Next and Previous page buttons. The Print Preview screen will display whatever page of your spreadsheet/workbook you are currently at. 217

At any time the preview page is zoomed out, clicking on it will zoom in. (You will see a magnifying glass mouse pointer when you do this). If the page is zoomed in, clicking on it will zoom out. Of course, you can also use the Zoom icon on the tab. Clicking the Margins button will display the page margins on the print preview. If you click again, the margins will disappear.

You can also place your mouse pointer on these margins and drag to reposition them. However, be careful when dragging margins. Keep in mind that repositioning the margins in this way may change the appearance of your printed page. Clicking the Close Print Preview button will close the Print Preview screen.

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Here is a print preview page after clicking on it to zoom in.

Here is the same page after clicking on it again. It is now once again zoomed out.

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Quick Printing
If you click the Quick Print item under the Print option in the Office menu, you will immediately send your workbook to the printer, with no special formatting or page setup.

Because quick printing does not allow you to set up page breaks, margins, or headers and footers, you may not be happy with the look of your printed pages. With this in mind, quick print is best suited for small spreadsheets with a relatively small number of rows and columns. Quick printing is also quite appropriate for small selections or ranges from a larger spreadsheet. It may be the case that you have an expansive spreadsheet and only need to print a few columns from it. To do this, just select a print region (a selection of cells) by dragging your mouse and then click Quick Print. When you do this, only the region you selected will be printed.

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Using Page Setup

If you click the Page Setup button in the upper left of the Print Preview screen you will see the Page Setup dialog box. You can also open the Page Setup dialog by clicking the small arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the Page Setup group on the Layout tab.

Heres what the Page Setup dialog looks like.

Under the Page tab, you can select page orientation, print scale, paper size and print quality settings. (Print quality is a kind of resolution, in dots per inch, for a printed document.) Basically, more dots per inch will mean more print quality.

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Under the Margins tab, you can specify how to center your page (horizontally or vertically) and you can directly enter values for the margins in the fields provided. You can even click on a margin data field to place your cursor in it and then enter a margin value of your choice (as measured in inches). Another option is to use the arrow buttons at the side of the data fields to change the margin values incrementally. As you may remember, Excel 2007s Margins button on the Page Layout tab also let you change the margin to preset sizes. Under the Header/Footer tab, you can choose headers and footers that will be visible on the top (header) and bottom (footer) of each printed page. You can select preset headers and footers by clicking on them in drop lists located beneath the header, and above the footer, preview fields.

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If you click the Custom Header or Custom Footer buttons, you will see a dialog box like the one shown below.

You can use this box to design a custom header by entering text in the provided fields. You can also format the text and enter page numbers, dates, and times by using the buttons above the text fields. As you can probably remember, Excel 2007s Page Layout view (Lesson 5.1) also allowed you to add footers and headers to your printed pages. Under the Page Layout tab you will find a control that will let you define a Print Area (a selection of cells from your workbook). You will also see controls to Specify Print Titles (row or column headings from your spreadsheet to repeat on each printed page). You can specify print areas or print titles by clicking in the appropriate field in the dialog box (to give it focus) and then selecting the cells you want with your mouse from the spreadsheet in question.

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When you do this, the cell ranges will be entered into the dialog box fields automatically.

You can also place checkmarks in the Gridlines box so that the gridlines will be included in your printout. If you place a check in the Row and Column Headings checkbox, the row numbers and column letters will be included on your printed pages as well. Finally, you can specify the Page Order for a large workbook or spreadsheet. Down then over will print pages from top to bottom and then move over in your spreadsheet one page width to start printing at the top again. Over then down will print pages in a row from left to right, move down one page length, and start printing at the next row of pages. When you are finished adjusting you print settings, click the OK button in the lower right of the dialog to save your changes and close the dialog. When you are ready, you can then print your pages.

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Upgrading a Workbook
If you have workbooks that were created with an earlier version of Excel (Excel 97 to Excel 2003) you can easily upgrade them to an Excel 2007 workbook. First, start Excel 2007 and use the Open dialog to open the earlier (file extension .xls) workbook file. Excel 2007 should have no problems opening files from earlier versions of Excel. Then, click the Office menu and click Convert.

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Excel will then warn you of the operation youre about to perform.

If you click OK, you will be alerted when the operation completes.

Although converting workbooks is recommended (as it allows you to use the new features of Excel 2007), we also recommend that you make a backup copy of the workbook before you attempt the conversion. You can, of course, use the Save As dialog to convert your workbook. Once the file is open, use the Office menu or the Ctrl + S shortcut to invoke the Save As dialog box.

In the Save As Type drop list, select the Excel Workbook option. This will save the workbook as an Excel 2007 workbook (file extension xlsx) regardless of what version of Excel the workbook was created with.

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