IC 3 BASICS, Internet and Computing Core Certification Key Applications Lesson 10 Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 102 Objectives Identify the parts of the Excel screen. Create and navigate through a worksheet. Use the AutoCorrect and AutoComplete features in Excel. Change column width and row height. Format the contents of a cell. Merge cells. Use the Undo and Redo features. AutoFormat the worksheet.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 103 Identify the Parts of the Excel Screen When you launch Excel, a blank worksheet will appear. It is given the default name Book1 until you save it under another name. The Excel window is similar to other Office applications. It has a title bar, menu bar, toolbars, and scroll bars. The New Document task pane is displayed on the right side of the window. The worksheet area is divided into rows and columns. Rows are horizontal and columns are vertical. The intersection of a row and column is a cell.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 104 The Excel Interface Window Active Cell Column identifiers Worksheet area Row identifiers Formula bar New Document task pane Worksheet tabs

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 105 Create and Navigate a Worksheet To create a worksheet, enter data into the cells. You must first select a cell before you can enter data. Click in a cell to select it, and a dark border will appear around the cell. Once you have selected a cell, just type the data for that cell. You can also enter data into the Formula bar. Press the Tab key to go to the next cell to the right of the active cell.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 106 Active Cells and the Formula Bar The figure on the lower left shows how the active cell will appear when it is selected. Once selected, you can enter data into the cell. If you move away from the cell and select it again, anything you type will replace the existing contents. You can change current cell content by selecting the cell, posi- tioning the insertion point in the Formula bar, and editing the existing text, as shown at lower right.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 107 Use Help to Navigate a Worksheet There are many ways to navigate between cells in an Excel worksheet. To find more information, click the Help menu and select Show Office Assistant if it is not already displayed. Enter “shortcut keys” in the search text box and click Search. A pane similar to the one at the right will appear with topics you can browse.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 108 Use the AutoCorrect and AutoComplete Features AutoCorrect is a feature that will automatically correct commonly misspelled words as you type. For example, if you type “teh”, it will change to “the” as you type. AutoComplete anticipates what you are typing and displays a suggested word. It compares the first few characters you type with words in adjacent cells to see whether you are entering a series of similar words or data. Press Enter to accept the proposed word or keep typing to ignore it.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 109 Change Column Width and Row Height If you enter data that is too wide for a cell, Excel might Display the data as a series of # signs. Cut off the data so only part of it is visible. Allow the data to run outside the column. You can widen the column by Dragging the column border sideways. Using the Column Width command. You can change row height in a similar fashion.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1010 Adjust Column Width In this figure, the data for cell B8 has extended into cell C8. You can drag the border for column B to the right to make the entire column wider than it currently is. Position the pointer on the line between the columns until it becomes the two- headed arrow shown here. Click the mouse button and drag. As you drag, a dotted line shows where the new column boundary will be if you release the mouse button.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1011 Format the Contents of a Cell Formatting the contents of a cell changes the way the data appears. You may want to change data alignment. You may want to add commas to large numbers. Some features that are easy to do include Change font, font attributes, and alignment. Format numbers and dates. Use Format Painter to format multiple cells.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1012 Change Font, Font Size, and Alignment of Text To modify text, select the cell or a group of cells. A selected group of cells is called a cell range. Once selected, use the Formatting toolbar to Change the typeface of existing text by selecting a new font. Apply bold, italic, or underline attributes to selected cells. Change text alignment using the alignment buttons. By default, text is left aligned and numbers are right aligned.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1013 Format Numbers and Dates You can use the Format Cells dialog box to format numeric and data fields. There are several predefined categories you can choose from. The options you can set vary for each category. Once you’ve formatted selected cells, you can copy the same format to other cells using the Format Painter. To do so: Select a cell that has the format to be used. Click the Format Painter button. Highlight all cells to be formatted the same as the selected cell.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1014 Format Cells Dialog Box Select the cell or cells to be formatted. Click the Format menu and choose the Cells option to open this dialog box. Note the categories available on the Number tab. Note also that a sample of the current type displays on the right. Select a category and you will see various options for that format appear on the right side as well.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1015 Set Currency Format In this figure, the Currency type has been selected. Note the new options available on the right side of the box. You can specify how many decimal places you want, whether to display or not display a dollar sign, and several display options for nega- tive numbers.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1016 Merge Cells You can join two or more adjacent cells together to create larger cells. This could be done for headers or for long text fields. To do so: Select the cells to be merged. Click the Merge and Center button on the Standard toolbar.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1017 Use the Undo and Redo Features When editing a worksheet, you may change something you did not mean to change. You can use the Undo command to reverse one or more actions. Click the list arrow on the Undo command box on the Standard Toolbar to see a list of actions. If you click on an action, that action and all actions above it will be undone. The Redo command can be used to reverse the result of an Undo command. This command also has an action list that allows you to select the commands to redo.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1018 AutoFormat the Worksheet Excel provides several predefined worksheet formats that can be used to give your worksheet a professional look. AutoFormats include font styles, colors, borders, shading, and other features. To apply an AutoFormat: Select the cells to be formatted Click the Format menu and choose AutoFormat. Scroll through the thumbnails and select one you like. Click the OK button to apply it to your worksheet.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1019 The AutoFormat Dialog Box This box shows samples of formats you can apply to a worksheet just by selecting one and clicking OK.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1020 Summary The Excel screen has its own unique screen parts,menus, and toolbars. To enter data in a cell, the cell must be selected using the mouse or keyboard to move from cell to cell. As you enter data, Excel will automati-cally correct some of your keyboarding errors. If the data matches characters of existing entries, Excel will propose the existing entry to save you time.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1021 Summary (continued) To change column width, drag a column border, use the AutoFit feature, or specify an exact measurement. When you format the contents of a cell, you change the appearance of the text or numbers in the cell. If you want text to span across several rows or columns, you can merge the cells into a single cell.

Creating and Formatting an Excel Worksheet – Lesson 1022 Summary (continued) The Undo command reverses a previous action. The Redo command reverses an undo action. You can quickly and easily give a work-sheet a professional look by applying one of the available AutoFormats.