EXCEL BASICS Helen Mills META Solutions
OUTLINE Introduction- Highlight Basic Components of Microsoft Excel Entering & Formatting Data, Numbers, & Tables Calculating Totals & Summaries Using Formulas Conditional Formatting Creating Reports Quickly Using Excel Productively
BASIC COMPONENTS OF EXCEL Introduction
QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR All of the tools important to you can be placed here. It starts off as file, save, undo, and redo until you add your tools. I added sort and filter by locating the tool, and right clicking and selecting add to quick access toolbar.
RIBBON Ribbon is an expanded menu that depicts all features of Excel in an organized and easy to understand form. Excel has thousands of features, but the ones you will probably use the most are Home, Insert, Formulas, Page Layout, & Data.
FORMULA BAR Calculations or formulas will appear here. Once you start building formulas, it will appear more relevant.
SPREADSHEET GRID All numbers, data, charts and drawings go here. There can be many sheets in a workbook, but the spreadsheet grid shows few rows and columns of the active sheet. To see more, you can use the scroll bars to the left or bottom of the view. To see another sheet, click on the sheet name. Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+Page Up or CTRL+Page Down
STATUS BAR This displays what is going on with Excel at any time. It will tell you if it is busy calculating a formula, creating a pivot report, or saving. The status bar also shows quick summaries of selected cells (count, sum, average, minimum or maximum values). You can change this by right clicking and choosing which summaries to show.
ENTERING & FORMATTING DATA, NUMBERS, & TABLES
TYPING & FORMATTING DATA Type text into a cell by clicking any blank cell and typing. To change the font of the cell, select the cells you want changed and choose a new font from the font menu. You can also change text color and size.
APPLYING CELL BORDERS Select the cells you would like to apply a border to and click on the border menu from the ribbon. You will have many options. Select the border you would like and it will be applied.
ALIGNING & WRAPPING TEXT To align your text, click on the cell or cells you would like to align and select the appropriate alignment from the alignment menu. To wrap your text in a cell, click the cell then select wrap text If you d like something to appear on the next line in a cell, use ALT+ENTER to create a line break.
CREATING TABLES TO FORMAT DATA QUICKLY Select the data that you would like to be in a table, and type CTRL+T and click okay. Ta-da! A beautiful table! The arrows next to each header are filter menus.
CHANGE COLORS If you d like to change the color of your workbook, go to the Page Layout tab of the ribbon. Select the colors menu, and pick your favorite!
FORMAT PAINTER You can use this tool to copy formatting from one area to another. The tool is located in the Home ribbon, top left. First, select the format you would like to copy, and then click on the format painted. Next, select the data you would like to format, and chose the format painter again.
CLEARING FORMATS Sometimes, a clean slate can be really helpful. Maybe someone made an ugly mess of your beautiful formatting! Just select all the cells, and go to home > Clear> Clear Formats. This will leave you with only values.
FORMATTING NUMBERS If you have a report with numbers in it that contain leading zeros, such as student ID s or IRN numbers, you may want to change the format of the number. To do this, click the cell or row of cells to select the numbers. CTRL+1 opens the format cells dialogue. Click on text then okay to format with leading 0 s.
FORMATTING KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS CTRL + 1 opens the formatting dialog box CTRL+B to bold any text CTRL+I italicize any text CTRL+U underline any text ALT+ENTER creates a line break in a cell CTRL+5 to strikethrough text F4 repeat last action. For example, you could apply bold formatting to a cell, select another and hit F4 to do the same. CTRL+T applies table formatting to current region of cells
FORMATTING OPTIONS FOR PRINTING Just because it looks great on your screen, doesn t mean it will look great once printed. The print settings can be accessed from the Page Layout ribbon. Use print preview and then modify your page layout settings if necessary.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Anytime you receive a report, it is helpful to apply a bold, colored, and outlined top row. You will also want to freeze this row, which we will cover in a later section. Text wrapping is useful for when you have a lot of text in a section of a report. Shapes and clipart can be used when creating forms, or you would like something to stand out in a report. Tables are a way to organize your data in an aesthetically pleasing way, and to also filter down to the data you would like to contain on the sheet. Changing colors and the format painter can help keep things consistent and organized within the sheet or workbook. Formatting is like seasoning food a little goes a long way!
CALCULATING TOTALS AND SUMMARIES Using formulas
WHAT IS A FORMULA? Formulas are just like math formulas. Excel is very powerful and can add a lot of variables to these formulas. Formulas are a great way to quickly and easily analyze your data.
SIMPLE SUM FORMULAS Pick an empty cell to type your formula in. To start any formula, type = =SUM(number1+number2 ) Simple way to sum multiple cells =SUM(number1:number100) Simple way to sum a range of cells.
SUMIFS FORMULA SUMIFS formula makes it easy to SUM on multiple conditions. For example, if we re looking at an FTE report and want to sum the total FTE based on the funding category, the SUMIFS formula will work perfectly. =SUMIFS( what you want to sum, condition column 1, condition) =SUMIFS(ORIGINAL FTE, FTE FUND PATTERN CODE, COMM )
SUMIFS CONTINUED *Pause for demonstration
SORTING DATA In many cases, simply sorting data can organize your data in the way you d like to view it. For example, sorting by IRN number, grade level, or SSID are common sorting options. Select the range of cells you would like sorted first. Then select the sort option and choose how you would like the data sorted, click okay and your list will be sorted.
FILTERING DATA Filtering data is helpful for when you want to only view data that meets a certain set of conditions. To apply filters to your data, first select the range of cells you d like to filter, then click on the filter menu. Little arrows will appear next to your headers.
FILTERING DATA CONTINUED Select the drop-down arrow next to the column that you d like to filter on. For this example we re going to filter to only see the FUND PATTERN CODE of COMM. You can filter on multiple conditions, so if you wanted to filter on COMM and a different district of residency, you could.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS SUM is great to add up FTE, attendance hours, and other numbers from Data Collector reports. SUMIFS is a great way to compare data with more than one variable. It can eliminate unnecessary sorting and provide a fast overview of your data Sorting data can provide an easy to understand list, such as by IRN, grade level, or SSID. Filtering helps narrow down data to what you really need to see. It also shows you an overview of the values that exist in a certain column. Great reports to use filters on are WKC, FTE, Program codes, and many more.
CONDITIONAL FORMATTING
WHAT IS CONDITIONAL FORMATTING? Conditional formatting is your way of telling excel to format all cells that meet a criteria in a certain way. You can use conditional formatting to change all of the cells that have a negative number to have a blue background to draw your attention to these cells. If you have a large amount of data or your values change often, conditional formatting is helpful by changing cell format when it meets a certain criteria.
HOW DO I APPLY CONDITIONAL FORMATTING? First, select the cells you d like to conditionally format. Next, click conditional formatting from the home ribbon and select new rule. Select the rule you d like and enter the values then click ok.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS There are many reasons to apply conditional formatting. You could be looking for any student with an FTE less than 1 and conditional format your FTE report. You could also color code your FTE report by fund pattern code, or whatever criteria you d like.
CREATING REPORTS QUICKLY
WHAT IS A PIVOT TABLE? Pivot tables are quick and easy reports in Microsoft Excel. They can be used to analyze, summarize, explore, and present your data. Pivot tables take rows of data and insert them into a chart based on how you set it up. This is an example of a pivot table.
HOW DO I CREATE A PIVOT TABLE? In this example, we will be using the FTE Detail report to show the students with disabilities by grade level. Get your FTE detail report from the data collector s most recent student collection. Once you have your data on a spreadsheet with headers, you can insert a pivot table.
HOW DO I CREATE A PIVOT TABLE CONTINUED Open your Spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, select the entire sheet by using CTRL + A on your keyboard or by selecting in between A & 1. On the Insert tab, choose the first option, Pivot Table. Select OK when the next prompt opens. You pivot table will be added on a new sheet.
Use the Pivot Table Fields Prompt box on the right of your new sheet to set up the pivot table. For Columns, we will drag and drop DISAB CNDTN CODE For Rows, we will drag and drop STATE EQUIV GRADE LEVEL CODE. For Values, we will drag and drop the Count of SSID s. If you accidentally move a field into the wrong box, just click and drag it away.
If you would like to add a filter to see only the students being educated by your district, the Student Percent of Time field is a good criteria to use. Drag and drop this field into the Filter box. You can then use the filter to select all values except for the blank/0. This will show you all kids who spend a % of time > 0 in your district.
If you would like to see the students being included in any value on a pivot table, just click on the number and a new sheet will open with the list. You can delete or save these sheets as desired. They make a very quick way to generate reports for district personnel to verify.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Use a Pivot Table to determine that students are on the correct calendar. Quickly and easily sum data, such as FTE by fund pattern. If you want to see how the value you re seeing on the pivot report was calculated, just click on the value and a new worksheet will open with the components. Use Pivot tables to quickly and easily sum data such as disability, disadvantagement, district of residence. Pivot tables are an easy way to arrange and verify data.
USING EXCEL PRODUCTIVELY
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS CTRL+space - select the whole column CTRL+shift - select the whole row CTRL+home - select the range from start cell to far left CTRL+P - print CTRL+ - copy a formula from above cell and edit CTRL + 0 - hide column CTRL + SHIFT + 0 - unhide column CTRL + 9 - hide row CTRL + SHIFT + 9 - unhide row CTRL + Z - undo CTRL + ; - enter current date
QUESTIONS / CLOSING Excel is a powerful and logical tool to analyze, create, and organize data. The tasks that can be performed in the program are endless. Use excel to open, organize, and analyze your data. If you use these skills, you can cut down on manual data comparisons and make it easier to analyze your data. Excel has a wonderful Help function for when you re feeling stuck. To access the help page, press F1 or click on the? in the top righthand corner. Search using keywords such as Sum to view articles on the topic.