Excel Essentials Designed by Jason Wagner, Course Web Programmer, Office of e-learning NOTE ABOUT CELL REFERENCES IN THIS DOCUMENT... 1 FREQUENTLY USED KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS... 1 FORMATTING CELLS WITH PRESET STYLES... 1 BASIC FORMULA EDITING... 2 COPYING CELLS... 2 RELATIVE VS. ABSOLUTE CELL REFERENCES... 4 PASTE SPECIAL... 5 DIFFERENT TYPES OF CHARTS... 6 CONVERTING DATA TO A TABLE... 7 CREATING CHARTS... 9 CONFIGURING CHARTS... 9 CHANGING THE DATA INCLUDED... 10
NOTE ABOUT CELL REFERENCES IN THIS DOCUMENT Throughout this document, the directions instruct you to Enter cell references, such as A4 or entire rows, like 1:1. In these instances, you can either: Click the cell you want to reference to select a single cell Click a cell on the corner and drag it to select a rectangular range of cells Click a box at the top of a column or left of a row (in the margin) to select an entire column or row. When entering choosing cells in a dialog window, you can click on the small box at the right of an input cell that has a red arrow pointing toward the top-right corner of the screen, such as the one below. Clicking this icon will collapse the dialog window and allow you to pick these cells. After you have chosen the cells, you can press the enter key to reopen the dialog window with the cells you ve selected automatically filled in to the cell. FREQUENTLY USED KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Control + 1: Format cell dialog for highlighted cell(s) Control + A: Select the table that the current cell is in Control + A (twice): Select the entire spreadsheet Control + B: Make text of selected cell(s) bold Control + C: Copy cell(s) Control + D: Copy cell as formula from the cell above Control + I: Make text of selected cell(s) italicized Control + U: Make text of selected cell(s) underlined Control + V: Paste cell(s) Control + Y: Redo Control + Z: Undo FORMATTING CELLS WITH PRESET STYLES Excel has built-in cell styles to make it easy to track what different cells do by making cells utilized for input values, output values, calculations, and other types. Under the Home tab, go to the Styles group and select Cell Styles. This will present a dropdown of all of the different cell styles. These cells will be used throughout the examples to easily show what we are looking at today. Excel Essentials Page 1
BASIC FORMULA EDITING Although Excel allows you to just enter regular text into a cell, the primary benefit of using Excel is you can also type formulas into the cells to have Excel. All formulas begin with an equal sign (=). Suppose you wanted to just do a basic mathematical calculation. Traditionally, if you wanted to think an say What is 2 + 3? the mathematical expression would be 2 + 3 =. However, we re going to reverse this and enter the formula in an Excel cell as =2 + 3. Doing this should produce the result of 5. This works for addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), and division (/). Next, suppose we want to do a mathematical operation on a number already entered in a cell. If we want to multiple the cell A2 by 2, we can enter the formula =A2 * 2. Note that, once we hit the equal sign, we can click on cells to automatically add it to the formula. So we can type =, click on cell A2, and then type in * 2. Finally, there are also functions in Excel. If you remember back to high school when your math teacher told you that you had a function like f(x) = x + 2, functions in Excel work in a similar way. For example, one of the functions in Excel is AVERAGE() which allows you to compute the average of a list of numbers. If we wanted to find the average of 3, 6, and 12, we could enter a formula =AVERAGE(3, 6, 12), which would give us the result of 7. Finally, all of these techniques for writing formulas can be merged together into one formula. The formula =AVERAGE(3, 6, A3) * 2 would take the average of the numbers 3, 6, and whatever value is in cell A3 and multiply them by 2. COPYING CELLS Suppose you have data that you want copied down to lower cells. Let s start with the following data set: Let s select the 5 in Column A. Then, use your mouse to grab the lower-right corner of the cell, and drag it down. You will see a small box that shows it is copying 5 down. Excel Essentials Page 2
When we release the mouse, we will see that it has filled in a 5 in all of the cells. Now, suppose we are entering data and, we want to fill a cell in with the formula immediately above it. We can accomplish this by hitting Control + D. Now, suppose we have a sequence of numbers that we would like to continue throughout the rows. In this case, select the bottom two rows that are already filled in. Then, similar to the first technique, drag the cells down. In the box, you will see the numbers copy 7, 9, 11, etc. Release the mouse to fill them in. Note that the two techniques that use dragging also work and allow you to drag horizontally across columns. If you attempt the last technique with non-numeric characters, it will repeat the sequence throughout the rest of the cell. For example, if you were to highlight cells containing A and B, the third cell would say A, the fourth B, the fifth A, and so on. Excel Essentials Page 3
RELATIVE VS. ABSOLUTE CELL REFERENCES One of the problems with the above method is when you re copying a formula. If you simply edit a cell reference as A4, for example, that is a relative cell reference. If you reference cell A4 in cell C4 and copy the contents of C4 into C5, then the formula will now reference A5. This is okay in some instances, but sometimes, you may not want cell the referenced cell to change. For example, take this timecard spreadsheet example: In this case, want to multiply each of the cells in Column B by cell B1 to get their pay for that day. So let s put in our pay for Sunday, cell C4, as =B1*B4. It looks like it worked fine. Now, using the technique we discussed earlier, grab the lower-right corner of cell C4 and drag it down to cell C10. What happened?!? Cell C6 says there is a value error, cell C5 says they earned $0 despite working 8 hours. The problem is we did a relative reference to cell B1 in our original formula. When we dragged it down to cell C5, it did 8 times nothing, which gave us zero, and when we dragged it down to cell C6, it did 8 times the word Hours, which is not a mathematical expression, giving us a value error. Excel Essentials Page 4
The reason why this happens can easily be confusing. To simplify the situation, suppose in cell B3, you add the formula =A1*2. The way Excel interprets this formula is not to multiply the contents of cell A1 by 2. Excel interprets this formula to be to multiply the cell that is two rows up and one cell to the left by two (as cell A1 is two rows above and one row to the left of B3). Thus, when this formula is copied down to cell B4, Excel again interprets this formula to be to multiply the cell that is two rows up and one cell to the left by two, and gives us the formula =A2*2. This is a relative cell reference because the cell that Excel is using to make the calculation is relative to the cell that the formula is being entered into. To correct this, we will use a dollar sign to make the cell fixed. It we have, for example, a cell reference of $D9, that keeps the column D fixed and will not change when copying the formula across to other columns. Similarly, D$9 keeps the row 9 fixed, and will not change when copying to other rows. Finally, cell $D$9 keeps both the column and row fixed, and will remain the same cell wherever you copy it to. So, in our original formula for C4, we want to fix the row and change the formula to =B$1 * B4. Now, if we drag this cell down through the remaining cells, it gives us our expected results. PASTE SPECIAL Let s suppose we want to copy the timecard used in the example above to another sheet. If we were to select the range of cells from A3 to C10 and paste it into another sheet, we get this as our result: Excel Essentials Page 5
This is a similar problem that we had in the last example. Each of those cells are now referencing cell B$1, as we used in the last sheet. However, cell B1 is now the word Hours. What we need to do instead is use Paste Special. This is found as the first icon in the Clipboard section of the Home ribbon. However, rather than clicking the clipboard icon, click the button where it says Paste with the downward pointing arrow. Under the second set of icons under the menu that pops up, pick the third icon, which appears to be a clipboard with numbers and a paint brush icon. This is Paste Values and Source Formatting. Rather than paste the formulas from the previous sheet, it pastes the values given by the formulas instead. This gives us the results we were originally expecting. DIFFERENT TYPES OF CHARTS The first step to creating a chart is to understand what the different charts are, and what purpose they serve. Pie Charts: Show proportions of a whole, and should add up to 100% -- no more, no less. Column/Bar (Horizontal) Charts: Show counts as trends of a particular item, and best used with fewer categories. o Clustered Column/Bar Charts: Column/Bar charts which groups different sets of data together as additional rectangles on the graph o Stacked Column/Bar Charts: Like clustered, but rather than placing them side-by-side, it adds the bars end-to-end o 100% Stacked Column/Bar Charts: A stacked column/bar chart that shows proportions of a whole as a pie chart does Line Chart: Show counts as trends of a particular item over time o Like Bar/Column charts, line charts also have stacked line charts and 100% stacked line charts that work in the same way for showing groups of data within a particular category. Scatter Chart: Shows a relationship between two variables, and allows trend data to be calculated. Area Charts: Show accumulated data, but can be difficult to read o Like Bar/Column charts, area charts also have stacked line charts and 100% stacked line charts that work in the same way for showing groups of data within a particular category. Sparklines: Small graphs which reside in cells and can be treated just like formulas; are not meant to show specific numbers, but trends. Stock Charts show high/low/open/close prices of a stock Surface Charts allow you to plot three dimensional data Doughnut Charts are pie charts of a different shape Bubble Charts allow you graph a third dimension (essentially a scatter chart of varying size for the points) Radar Charts allow you to chart three or more pieces of data in a two-dimensional surface Excel Essentials Page 6
CONVERTING DATA TO A TABLE To this point, all of the data we have been working with has been in what Excel calls ranges. The Table feature of Excel allows you to group data together. When we get to features later in this seminar, it will be very useful in allowing us to expand how much data we have, or add additional pieces of data. One prerequisite to using Tables is that they work best when all of the formulas in column must be the same that is, the formula must be replicated, and cannot be modified for a particular row to be different from others. To create a table, simply highlight all of the data that will be included in the table. Then, go to the Insert tab, and select Table. When the dialog box appears, click OK. This will create a table around our data. You will notice the header row is a different color, and the row colors now alternate. You will also see that when you scroll down so that the header row is no longer visible, the header row replaces the column labels above the spreadsheet. Once the table has been created, you will want to give the table a name to make it easily identifiable. To do this, click anywhere inside the table, and go to the Design tab under Table Tools. Then, enter a name under the Table Name: prompt. Now, you can use the table name as a reference, rather than the cell, row, and column labels. Excel Essentials Page 7
As mentioned earlier, one of the primary benefits of using Tables is that they are easily expandable. Enter something in the column immediately to the right of the table you ve created, and you will see the table will expand into that column. Similarly, entering something in the row immediately below the table you ve created will expand the table as well. Now, enter a formula in a new column. One thing you will notice is, as you enter the formula and click on cells in the table to reference them, they will not use cell references it will reference them by the label in the header of that column in the table. For example, below, the headers are called SUMMER, FALL, and SPRING. In the total column, if the cells referenced are in the same row, you can see them listed as [@SUMMER], [@FALL], and [@SPRING]. It simply references the fields in the same row by using [@ColumnName]. However, if you type cell references, entering references will still work, and is required for any cell reference not to the same row. Now, when you hit enter to save the formula, you will see the formula be copied down throughout the entire table. Sorting and filtering works the same as it does when you are working with just a range of data. With filtering, you will see that the filters are already enabled in the header row of the table, so the first step of turning that on is not necessary. Excel Essentials Page 8
There are several options for formatting tables, such as the colors and adding banded rows or columns. To change these, click in the Table, and select the Design toolbar under Table Tools. CREATING CHARTS The first step to creating your chart is to make sure your data is properly formatted in the spreadsheet. Although you can set these after you create the chart, it is much easier to do from the initial spreadsheet. All similar data measuring the same thing should appear in the same column. All data relating to the same category should appear in the same row. In the first row of each column, it should list what it is measuring, while the first column of each row should list the category. To put a title on the graph automatically, put it in the first row of the first column. Once your data is properly formatted, highlight everything that will go in the chart including data, headings, category labels, titles, etc. Then, go to the Charts ribbon and select the button for the chart you want to create. When the chart is created, it is, by default, a floating object on the spreadsheet that contains the original data. To move it to its own sheet, right-click on the chart and select Move Chart. Then, select New sheet and enter a name for this spreadsheet. CONFIGURING CHARTS To configure charts, you have the following options: On the Design toolbar under Chart Tools, you can select a premade layout configuring everything at once under the Chart Layouts section of thumbnails. On the Layout toolbar under Chart Tools, you can select each individual component (Labels, Axes, and Background) and what to show for each. You can customize titles, axes, legends, data labels, and tables for most types of charts. Excel Essentials Page 9
On the Layout toolbar under Chart Tools, you can change the dropdown menu to specifically what you want to configure. Then, beneath it, hit the Format Selection dialog. On this dialog, you can, for example, change the range of axis (minimum and maximum), how frequently gridlines appear, whether tick marks appear, etc. Note that pie charts have different options than the rest of the charts. These options include the rotation of the pie chart, whether the pie pieces are exploded, and any labels on the individual pie pieces. CHANGING THE DATA INCLUDED Occasionally, you may need to change the data represented in the chart. If you change the values in cells that are already contained in your chart, your chart will automatically update. However, other times, you may need to remove or add data. When we covered Tables, it was noted that the primary benefit was that the tables could easily be expanded when using other functions in Excel. One of these functions is with Charts. As noted earlier in the seminar, if you add data to the column immediately to the right of the table, or in the row immediately below the table, the table will automatically expand, and in this case, will automatically be added to your chart. To remove data from a chart, simply hide the rows or columns in the table that you want to remove. If you do not use a table, you must manually change the data contained in your chart. You may also run into the problem when you create the graph where the data is reversed or flip-flipped that is, the data you want on the horizontal axis is on the vertical access, and vice versa. To correct this, click the Charts ribbon, and under Data, select Switch Row/Column. Excel Essentials Page 10