1. EXCEL BASICS
Helen Mills
OME-RESA

2. 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

3. BASIC COMPONENTS OF EXCEL
Introduction

4. 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”.

5. 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.

6. FORMULA BAR
Calculations or formulas will appear here. Once you start building formulas, it will appear more relevant.

7. 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

8. 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.

9. ENTERING & FORMATTING DATA, NUMBERS, & TABLES

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. USING SHAPES AND CLIPART
On the insert tab of the ribbon, select the shapes menu, and choose your shape. You can then select the size of the shape by dragging the cursor. To insert clipart, select “Pictures” instead of shapes.
With your shape selected, you may use the format tab of the ribbon to change the color and outline of the shape.

14. 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.

15. 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!

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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 formal cells dialogue. Click on text then okay to format with leading 0’s.

19. 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

20. 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.

21. 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!

22. CALCULATING TOTALS AND SUMMARIES
Using formulas

23. 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

24. SIMPLE SUM FORMULAS Pick an empty cell to type your formula in.
To start any formula, type =
=SUM(number1+number2…)
Simply way to sum multiple cells
=SUM(number1:number100)
Simple way to sum a range of cells.

25. 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”)

26. SUMIFS CONTINUED
*Pause for demonstration

27. 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 chose how you would like the data sorted, click okay and your list will be sorted.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. SORTING DATA TO VALIDATE SUB-CALENDARS
Task #19 in the FY17 Period S checklist is to verify the Sub- calendars and EMIS exceptions have been set up correctly. We can do this easily using the data collector reports and a simple excel sort.
Step 1 is to get your calendar display report from the Data Collector. Open with Excel when prompted.

32. This report comes out of the data collector sorted by sub calendar
This report comes out of the data collector sorted by sub calendar. We want to verify that all sub- calendars have the same exceptions, so we would like to view the report by date.
To do this, let’s sort by the row number.
Now all the dates are together.
Scroll down to start verifying that everything looks uniform.

33. You can see here that the KG sub calendar started later than the other calendars. This is accurate so we will continue checking. I use the district calendar to know where to look for errors, such as on holiday breaks. I also check to make sure all of the PTC hours are in there for all of the appropriate sub-calendars.

34. CONDITIONAL FORMATTING

35. 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.

36. 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.

37. 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 funding pattern code, or whatever criteria you’d like.

38. CREATING REPORTS QUICKLY

39. 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 a DASL report turned into a pivot table for an easy overview.

40. HOW DO I CREATE A PIVOT TABLE?
Once you have your data on a spreadsheet with headers, you can insert a pivot table.
First, select the data you want in your pivot table.
Go to insert ribbon and click on Pivot Table.
A dialogue box will appear. Click ok.

41. HOW DO I CREATE A PIVOT TABLE CONTINUED
To make your pivot table, drag and drop fields into the pivot table grid area.
The report is broken down into 4 categories; Report Filter, Column Labels, Row Labels, and Values.
You will see data appear as you fill out this portion.

42. If you’d like to analyze a particular part of the table, click the value to view a table of the data being included in the count.

43. 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.

44. USING A PIVOT TABLE TO VERIFY STUDENTS’ EMIS SITUATION ASSIGNMENTS
The 5th task in the FY17 Period S checklist is to Run the STAT report to verify students’ EMIS situation assignments.
We can do this quickly with a pivot table, as opposed to reading every line of the report.
Step 1 is to run your STAT report. You want to format the report in TEXT.

45. Step 2 is to open your report
Step 2 is to open your report. Verify these reports one building at a time. If you have a lot of buildings, it could get very confusing to do more than one at a time.
The report opens in a web page. CTRL+A to select all of the text, and CTRL + C to copy.
Next, open up text pad (mac) or notepad (windows) and CTRL+V to paste
We want to “trim” the report headings all the way down to the column headings.

46. Once your document looks like the one to the right, you can save it as
Once your document looks like the one to the right, you can save it as .txt
Notice that the document is comma separated; this is how we will be importing it into excel.
Once it has been saved, close your document.

47. Next, open up Excel. Select open, and find your
Next, open up Excel. Select open, and find your .txt file on your computer. When the window opens, you may have to change the file time from All Excel Files to All Files.
You will get a pop up window, click yes. You will get another pop up window, click ok. Next, the text import wizard opens up.
Select Delimited as the data type, check “my data has headers”, and click next.

48. Select “comma” as the Delimiter and click Next.
On the last prompt you can format your text, I just leave it at general and click “Finish”.
Now we have an easy to read spreadsheet. The last thing we have to do is rid of the page headers DASL includes on all reports.

49. Sort the sheet by Column A A-Z.
All of the page headings will appear under row 1. Delete all of these rows to be left with just your data.
Now we’re ready to insert the Pivot Table.

50. Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon, and click on Pivot Table
Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon, and click on Pivot Table. Next Click Ok on the prompt box.
Now we are able to format the Pivot Table.

51. Your data is now organized in an easy to read, easy to validate fashion. If you’d like to investigate any number on the table, simply click on it and a new sheet will open with the student IDs used to populate the number.

52. USING A PIVOT TABLE TO VERIFY STUDENTS’ CALENDAR ASSIGNMENTS
The 20th task in the FY17 Period S checklist is to verify students are assigned to the proper attendance pattern and attendance calendar.
We can do this quickly with a pivot table, as opposed to running the R500 and checking line by line.
Step 1 is set up an EZ Query. For Filter Criteria, select nothing.
For field selection, we want the Student EMIS ID, First Name, Last Name, Gender from the “Students” tab. On the “Enrollment” tab, we want to select Attendance Calendar, Student Status, and Building Grade. Last, we want to select the “EMIS” tab and choose Percent of Time.
We can finish running the report as a CSV file and open it up.

53. We are ready to insert a Pivot table!
Go to your excel workbook, and on the Insert tab, select Pivot Table. Click Ok.
First you want to validate there are no grade level discrepancies, such as KG on DFLT calendars. The pivot table allows you to easily see this. Once you’re done validating it that way, we can do it another way as well!

54. Now that we’ve verified by grade level, let’s verify by percent of time.
Update your pivot table settings to look like this and click Update.
We can now easily see issues with the calendars simply by the % of time. For example, there’s 4 kids with a DFLT calendar and 0% of time. Click on the “4” to bring up those kids and update them in DASL.

55. USING EXCEL PRODUCTIVELY

56. KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS CTRL + 0 - hide column
CTRL + SHIFT unhide column
CTRL hide row
CTRL + SHIFT unhide row
CTRL + Z - undo
CTRL + ; - enter current date
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

57. 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.