How Do I Start Using Excel?

Excel has a lot in common with other programs you may have used, including the other Microsoft 365 applications. Its interface is easy to navigate yet loaded with powerful features designed to save you time and work. Getting dialed in on all the basics will enable you to spend more of your time analyzing the meaning of your data, which is the important thing, right? This chapter introduces you to the "must know" skills for kicking off your work in Excel. It covers essential command and navigation features of the user interface, reviews key techniques for creating and working with files, and guides you through getting data into sheet cells and making selections.

• Starting and Exiting Excel
• Taking a Look Around
• Working with Files
• Making Your First Cell Entries
• Making Selections
• Working with Sheets
• Saving and Closing a File

Starting and Exiting Excel

Windows 10 gives you a few options for starting a program so that you can get to work. You may already have your preference for how to start up, but if not, you can try one of these methods:

• Start button. Click the Start button at the left end of the Windows taskbar. Move the mouse pointer over the right edge of the list of programs in the Start menu so that a scroll bar expands, and then use the scroll bar or the scroll wheel on your mouse to scroll down until you see Excel in the list. Then choose Excel. You also can pin a larger tile for starting Excel to the right side of the Start menu. Right-click Excel in the list of Start menu programs, and choose Pin to Start. Then you can open the Start menu and click the large tile. If you need to remove the tile later, right-click it and choose Unpin from Start.
• Windows logo key. Press the Windows logo key on your keyboard. Press the down arrow on your keyboard as needed until Excel is selected, and then press Enter.
• Search box. Click in the Search box to the right of the Start button on the taskbar. If a tile for Excel appears in the Top Apps section, click it. If not, start typing Excel, and then choose Excel App when it appears under Best Match, as shown in Figure 1.1.

1.1 Select Excel App when using Windows Search to start Excel.

Genius

If using the Start menu to launch Excel isn't for you, then you can pin an Excel button to the taskbar. With Excel open, right-click its button on the taskbar, and then choose Pin to Taskbar. Click the pinned Excel button on the taskbar to start the program. If you decide you want to unpin the button, right-click it on the taskbar and choose Unpin from Taskbar.

When Excel opens, it prompts you to create a new document or open an existing one. The later section called "Working with Files" provides more details about those choices. For now, you could just click the Blank Workbook thumbnail to create a new file.

When you've finished all your work in Excel for the day, you should close or exit the program. You could shut down Windows without closing Excel, but it's a better practice to close Excel first to ensure you've saved all your work. As when starting Excel, you have these options for closing or exiting the program:

• Click the Close (X) button at the upper-right corner of the screen.
• Press Alt+F4.

To close the current file without exiting Excel, click the File tab near the upper-left corner of the Excel window, and then choose Close. If you have a file with unsaved work open and exit Excel or close the file, a message box asks whether you want to save changes to the file. You can click the Save or Don't Save button as needed.

Caution

If you have multiple Excel files open, closing one of them doesn't close down Excel overall. You have to close every open Excel file to make sure you've completely exited the program.

Taking a Look Around

When you're writing a document in a word processor, you can get away with just typing a lot and not knowing the nuances of how to get around. Excel is trickier than that. Some of the features of its interface are important to being able to work accurately in the program, especially when it comes to creating formulas that calculate or organizing data effectively. While some of what this section covers may seem familiar based on your work with other programs, especially other Microsoft 365 programs, you might learn about a few unique Excel interface features that offer powerful shortcuts.

Reviewing key screen features

At first glance, the Excel screen can look a bit busy with an extreme number of buttons and letters and numbers and boxes. Each sheet in an Excel file has more than 16,000 columns and 1,000,000 rows, for a total of more than 17 billion cells! That sounds overwhelming, so I'm going to zero in on the key screen features you need to know to work in Excel, which are shown in Figure 1.2. Later parts of the book will cover other features of the Excel interface in discussions about particular tasks and actions.

1.2 You will work with these tools in Excel.

Here's what you need to know about the screen features shown in Figure 1.2:

• Title bar. The title bar identifies the name of the current file and holds other tools at its left and right end.
• Quick Access Toolbar. Found at the left end of the title bar, the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) offers Save, Undo, and Redo buttons by default. The Undo and Redo buttons become active after you start performing actions in cells. Clicking the down arrow at the right end of the QAT opens the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu, where you can choose the name of another button that you want to add to the QAT.
• Ribbon. The ribbon below the title bar uses tabs to organize the majority of the commands that you'll use in Excel. Click a ribbon tab to see its commands. The names along the bottom of the ribbon identify commands that are grouped together because they have related or similar functions. In most cases, you click a button on the ribbon to choose a command, though clicking a button with a drop-down list arrow on it opens a list of additional choices. Still other ribbon buttons are split, with both a regular button on the top and a down arrow on the bottom part of the button. Clicking the top half of a split button executes the command immediately, while clicking the bottom part with the arrow opens a list of choices. Other buttons are split the other way, with the main button on the left and a drop-down list arrow on the right. Pressing the Alt key displays letters and numbers, sometimes called keytips, that you can press to choose a ribbon tab and then a command.

  
  Note

  
  

  I'll use a type of shorthand throughout the book to tell you which ribbon command to choose, giving the tab, group, and specific button. For example, if I say "Choose Data ? Sort & Filter ? Filter," it means to click the Data tab on the ribbon, look for the Sort & Filter group of commands, and in that group, click Filter. Command sequences can be longer if a list or menu appears.

• Dialog box launcher. Some groups on the ribbon include a small button called a dialog box launcher in the lower-right corner. Clicking one of these buttons opens a dialog box with more detailed choices, such as the Format Cells dialog box.
• Formula bar. You will use this area to enter and edit cell contents. The Formula bar also displays the contents of the active cell. Or, if the active cell contains a formula, the formula appears in the Formula bar, while the formula results appear in the cell itself.
• Row numbers and column letters. The working area in Excel is organized into rows and columns of cells. The column letters across the top of the grid and the row numbers down the left side identify the address or location of a cell or range. The bands with the letters and numbers are also called row and column headers.
• Active cell. A bold outline, sometimes called the cell selector, identifies the active or currently selected cell. When more than one cell is selected, the bold box surrounds the entire selection.
• Mouse pointer. When you're using the mouse in Excel, the mouse pointer changes shape often to cue you when it's in the correct position to perform a particular action. By default, the pointer shape is a bold white plus, as shown in Figure 1.2, but at times it may change to a black plus, a two-headed arrow, and other...