A spreadsheet.

The workbook

The majority of the excel window displays the workbook.

A workbook can contain several worksheets.

The work sheet

A worksheet consists of a matrix of rows and columns

at the intersection of a row and column

The cell

referencing

an active cell

the fill handle.

cell appearances

the concept of range

excel allows you to select discontinuous range

selecting discontinuous ranges with the ctrl button.

inserting a column

inserting a row

page set up

print preview

navigating excels sheets

activating work sheets

activating work sheets brings the worksheet to the worksheet window and allows you to edit the worksheet directly. to switch between work sheets click on the work sheet tab with the cursor or use the keyboard short cut.

ctrl + page up activates the next worksheet. and ctrl+ page down activates the previous work sheet.

[image of multiple sheets, with scroll arrows highlighted]

excel documents can some times contain many work sheets that do not fit on the screen. You can always scroll through the worksheets but with very large documents this can be tedious. Right click on the arrow tabs to reveal a list of named work sheets. select the desired worksheet and excel will instantly display it in the worksheet window.

Changing the name of worksheets

Inserting new worksheets

Deleting worksheets

linking workbooks

the dynamic nature of one workbook changing and it affecting another.

• external reference

• dependent workbooks

• source workbooks

A spread sheets acts like a grid of data. This grid is made from cells with each cell containing a piece of information. In this way a spread sheet can hold many pieces of information just as if each one were in its own personal box separated from the others.

Cells are organized into rows and columns, this helps arrange data into a readable  format that allows the user to find information quickly and easily.

When dealing with a large crime scene with many pieces of evidence, crime scene investigators divide a location into a organized grid. Evidence collected from a specific square on the grid is bagged and labeled using the coordinate of the square so that evidence is not lost or so that the scene can be put back together in the lab.

When Using Electronic Spread sheets The exact location of each cell is used to reference the information in side the cell. This is important other wise information can be lost or the wrong information referred to when a change is made.

Every cell in a spreadsheet is unique, each having its own name and location. A cell is defined by its row and column in the following way:

The column location and then row, for example this cell is C6.

Cells can separate, organize and index information very effectively but the the most useful function of an electronic spread sheet is the ability to manipulate the information in the cells in real time!

For example If you have a long list of numbers Excel can find their total almost instantly.

One of the first and most popular applications for electronic spread sheets were accounting legers. These books are used to list accounting information and calculate totals, averages and percentages. In the old system any changes that were made to the data had to then be recalculated  and updated one at a time by hand.

 Using an electronic spread sheet allows the user to take advantage of one of the computers great strengths, its ability to perform repetitive tasks extremely quickly with little or no error.

This is useful because it allows accountants and business users to perform thousands of calculations per second on the information in the cells.

If a cell needs to be updated the changes ripple through all the calculations updating totals averages and percentages throughout the spread sheet.