Data Entry Cells The majority of Excel's screen real-estate is spent on data entry

cells. Each cell has a cell reference, expressed as a column and a row number; the top-
left cell is cell A1. This cell reference can be used as a data input into a formula. Cells
can be resized in height and width by holding your mouse cursor over the dividers
between the gray cells to the top and to the right, clicking and dragging. Cell contents
can be formatted with background colors and text colors. The text can have different
fonts in different sizes. No matter how you format the contents of a cell, it won't change
the result of a calculation.

The Formula Bar Above the cell reference area for Excel is a white space preceded
with the "fx" icon. This area is the formula entry area. All Excel formulas start with the
"=" sign. To enter a formula, simply click on the cell you'd like to place it in and start
typing. What you type will be mirrored in the formula entry area. If you want what you
enter to always be evaluated as text, make the first character a single quote "'" and
then continue typing. When you press "Enter," the formula entered will be run. Excel's
formula entry area offers auto-completion of Excel functions, and color-codes parts of
your formula to aid troubleshooting. To the left of the formula area is a white space used
for naming selected cell ranges, or entering a cell reference and being taken directly to
that cell.

Navigation Area By default, Excel opens a new workbook with three worksheets;
these are shown at the bottom of the screen with tabs, named Sheet1, Sheet2 and
Sheet3. To the left of the tabs are arrows for scrolling through tabs if you have more
than can be displayed at once. By double-clicking a tab, you can rename it; by right-
clicking it, you can change its color. To the right of the tabs are the horizontal slider and
the zoom slider. You can also navigate through cells within a given worksheet with your
arrow keys.

The Ribbon Excel uses the Ribbon interface to show available tools. The Ribbon
replaces the older top-level menu toolbar from Excel 2003 and earlier. When a tab is
selected, all of the icons showing available functions will change. The File area opens to
a panel for saving and closing files, while the Home tab gives you the most common
formatting options. Insert lets you create data tables, pivot tables and charts. Page
Layout lets you control how your spreadsheet will appear on a printed page, while the
Formulas tab gives you a categorized library of Excel functions to use, as well as the
Name Manager for naming ranges of cells for easier referencing.

Charts and Analytics Excel can create charts from data in a given range of cells.
The charting tools are in the Insert tab, and allow you to create bar plots, scatter graphs,
stacked bar charts and pie charts, among many more options. Smaller charts that fit
within a cell or group of merged cells are also available; these are called sparklines. In
the Data tab, you can create live links between your spreadsheet and external data
sources, like stock exchange feeds. The Data tab also lets you do "what-if" analysis and
linear regressions, as well as use the Solver tool for finding the relationships between
multiple variables.

MS WORD

Let's briefly review the basic parts of the Word XP window before we move
onto word processing. Shown below is the Microsoft Word default window. WhenWord is
launched, a new blank documentor default windowopens in Print Layout view.

MS ECXEL

A workbook automatically shows in the workspace when you open Microsoft Excel XP. Each
workbook contains three worksheets. A worksheet is a grid of cells consisting of 65,536 rows by
256 columns. Spreadsheet informationtext, numbers, or mathematical formulasis entered
into different cells.

Microsoft PowerPoint

part of the Office 2003 suite, is a presentation graphics application. A presentation is a

combination of slides, handouts, notes, and outlines all in one file. You can add text, graphics,
photos, clip art, sound, and video to your slides.