If you have never worked with Excel, it can be a little confusing at first. When you open Excel, you are faced with various toolbars and menus and a big, empty grid. So what do you do with it? The great thing about Excel is that you can use it for almost any task that requires organizing, analyzing and presenting information. I first used Excel as a grad student when I was assigned to keep track of grades for a class of 200 students. Realizing that I did not want to do that manually, I learned how to use Excel very quickly. Fortunately, Excel is fairly intuitive and simple to learn once you get past the basics. I hope with these notes I can get you past those basics and to a point where you can learn more from there. HINT: there are many ways you can format information in Excel, from calculations to graphs to data tables. You can almost always find a format menu, and the option you are looking for, by highlighting the object you want to format and right-clicking on it. The right click summons a pop-up menu which is usually very helpful. HINT: Excel allows you to complete repetitive tasks very efficiently. Essentially, you tell Excel what to do once, and you can copy and paste it as many times as you like. If you ever find yourself doing anything repetitive (e.g. typing the same thing over and over), STOP! And recognize that you re doing it the hard way. Excel will let you do it the easy way. Cell Reference The workspace, where you enter your information, do your calculations, display graphs, etc, in Excel appears as a big grid. At the top of the grid is a list of letters, starting with A, B, C... If you scan far enough to the right, you will find Z. Beyond that, you will find AA, AB, AC, etc. It goes on and on. At the left side of the grid you will find numbers. They go into the thousands. We will never use the full grid in this class. These numbers refer to a row of cells, while the letters at the top refer to a column of cells. What is a cell? Simply a little box on the grid. Into each cell you can enter a number or text. You can type whatever you like in a cell. And management of the cells is what allows you to organize, analyze and present your information. The first step in cell management is to define a cell reference. Every cell has a name which Excel recognizes. The cell name, or reference, is simply its column and row. For example: Page 1 of 6
The yellow cell in this example is B3, while the blue cell is H6 (why are the cells colored?? don t worry about that... I did it just to highlight them. If you must know, it s in the formatting menu which can be accessed by clicking the little paint can button in the upper right.) Cell references become very important when you start analyzing your data by performing calculations or creating graphs. You will enter your data in cells, and tell Excel which data to calculate with (or graph) by using the cell references for that data. Resizing Rows and Columns A very important part of formatting in Excel is changing the dimensions of, or resizing, the cell. This is very easy to do, and very important. To increase or decrease the width of a column of cells, place the cursor on the right boundary of the column heading, so that the cursor becomes a black two-way arrow. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the column, either wider or narrower, to the desired width. The same process works to create narrower or wider rows, except that the lower boundary of the row header (i.e. the column of numbers on the left, used for cell references) must be dragged. Consider the following examples: Page 2 of 6
Of course all the cells in the same column must be the same width, and all the cells in the same row must be the same height. This may seem like a serious limitation on how you can organize your information, but there is one more useful formatting function that helps tremendously. It is called... Merging Cells (and Unmerging Cells) Merging cells allows us to customize exactly how we want each cell to look. For example, if I wanted one wide cell in the middle of a row but the cells above and below to be normal width, I can merge several cells in the middle of that row. I can also create a tall cell by merging several cells in a column. And I can even merge many cells in adjacent rows and columns... if I really wanted to. It works like this: Notice that the five cells are combined into one wide cell. This formatting feature can be very useful when creating a title at the top of a data table, for example. Page 3 of 6
What if you have made a mistake and you want to unmerge these cells? You have two options. UNDO might just become your best friend while you learn Excel. The Undo command simply reverses your last step. It can be accessed from the Edit menu at the top of the screen, or the shortcut button in the toolbar (looping arrow pointing backward), or by pressing Ctrl+Z. In the latest version of Excel, clicking the merge and center button again will unmerge the cells. Calculations in Excel One of the simplest and most important features of Excel is that it can perform calculations of nearly any kind imaginable, using the numbers you enter in the cells. The result of the calculation is displayed in another cell. For example, if cell B4 contains the number 9 and cell C4 contains the number 6, I can find their sum and display it in cell D4. I do this by entering a formula in cell D4. A formula in Excel is an instruction you provide to tell Excel what to calculate. All formulas MUST start with an equal sign. From there, it is pretty simple. If I want D4 to display the sum of 9 and 6, I simply type in cell D4: = B4 + C4 I can display the product of 9 and 6 in cell D5 by entering: = B4 * C4 in that cell. Like this: Any calculation can be performed in Excel and I will expect that you will perform all of your lab calculations in Excel. With this in mind, there is no reason you should touch a calculator during lab. Simple calculations in Excel use the symbols + - * / for addition, subtraction, multiplication and Page 4 of 6
division. Parentheses are also used to indicate order of operations. A caret ( ^ ) is used for exponents. Many, many functions are also programmed into Excel, such as =sin(...) =cos(...) =exp(...) for sine, cosine and natural exponential. The... in the parentheses is replaced with the argument of the function, which could be a cell reference or a number or even a calculation (e.g. a cell reference divided by 2). Quick note: Excel has an excellent Help menu through which you can quickly find the proper syntax of any function you might want to use, as well as the full description of what that function requires for input and what it will calculate. Make use of the Help menu! Creating a Data Table It is safe to assume that every lab report this semester will include one or more data tables. A data table is simply an efficient way to organize and display your information. There are some steps to consider carefully: How many columns will your data table require? Remember that you need a spacer column between data columns and on the left and right side of the table. How many rows will your table require? You will need extra rows at the top for column headers and a title, as well as a spacer row at the top and bottom of the table. Data tables usually require resizing of rows and columns so that they are formatted properly. For this reason, it is important that you establish the formatting of any data table prior to entering other information (graphs, calculations, etc) in your report. A typical data table should look something like this: Page 5 of 6
I resized the columns and rows to ensure I had plenty of space for my data. Notice the extra spacer columns between the columns of data, and the spacer rows at the bottom of the table and the top of the table. I merged the cells in row 3 to create one wide cell for my title. I added column headers and my data. Note that while I typed in the first three columns of data, the last column was calculated as the difference between the Outside Temp and Inside Temp for each row. You may also notice that I added a border around the outside of my table, as well as underlined the cells that contain my column headers. Both of these formatting requirements can be accessed from the Borders menu. I also allowed my column headers to wrap... that is, to make two lines within the same cell. This option is available in the Format Cells menu. For many of these little formatting bits, I will point you in the right direction but allow you to find them on your own. Page 6 of 6