Microsoft Excel 2007-2013 part-4

Introduction to Section 2

Now that you've gotten a feel for how Excel works, we'll build a more complex spreadsheet. The skills you'll learn in this section are:

• How to use AutoFill
• How to insert a row or a column
• How to add up numbers in a column
• And how to enter simple formulas for your calculations

The spreadsheet you'll construct looks like this, when it's finished:

Not much has been done in the way of formatting here, as we'll concentrate on how to add up in Excel. To make a start, follow along with the instructions below.

• Click inside of cell A1 on a new spreadsheet
• Type the text "My Chocolate Addiction", then press the Enter key on your keyboard
• Highlight the cells A1, B1 and C1, and Merge the cells, just like you did for Review One
• Your spreadsheet will look like this in Excel 2007:

Or this in Excel 2010 and 2013:

Now that you have a heading for your spreadsheet, we'll fill in the days of the week using something called AutoFill. This allows you to quickly fill in things like days of the week, months, and consecutive numbers. 

How to use AutoFill

Your spreadsheet from the previous section should look like this one:

You have a title in cell A1, but nothing else. You'll now see how to use the AutoFill feature of Excell to quickly enter the days of the week. Off we go, then.

Excel AutoFill

Click inside cell B3 of your spreadsheet, and type Monday, as in the image below:

The days of the week are going to be entered on Row 3 of our spreadsheet, from cell B3 to cell H3. Fortunately, you don't have to type them all out. You can use something called AutoFill to complete a known sequence like days of the week. In other words, Excel will do it all for us.

• Position your mouse pointer to the bottom right of the B3 cell
• The mouse pointer will change to a black cross, as in the images below. The image on the left shows the normal white cross; the image on the right, the black cross, tells you AutoFill is available:

    

• When you can see the AutoFill cursor, hold down your left mouse button and drag to the right
• Drag your mouse all the way to cell H3, as in the following image:

• When your cursor is in the H3 cell, let go of the left mouse button
• Excel will now complete the days of the week:

And that's all there is too it! AutoFill can be a handy tool to use, when you want to complete a known sequence like days of the week, months, and even formulas. We'll use AutoFill on a column of numbers, shortly. But let's crack on with our spreadsheet

Now that we've got a heading for the spreadsheet, as well as the days of the week, we can enter a few chocolate bars.

• Click inside cell A4 and enter the name of a chocolate bar. You can enter anything you like, but we've gone for Mars Bars. In cell A5 we chose Twix, and in cell A6 Bounty. In cell A7 we typed Other
• In cell A9 of you spreadsheet enter the words Day Totals. Leave cell A8 blank. Your spreadsheet should then look something like ours below:

Time to enter some numbers.

• Click inside cell B4, and enter the number 1. Press the enter key on your keyboard, and the active cell will jump down to cell B5
• In cell B5 type the number 7. Press the Enter key again to jump down to cell B6
• In cell B6 type 8
• In cell B7 type 1
• Your spreadsheet will then look like this one:

To complete the numbers for the rest of the week, enter the following under each heading:

Tuesday: 2, 5, 3, 2
Wednesday: 1, 3, 2, 2
Thursday: 3, 2, 3, 2
Friday: 3, 4, 4, 2
Saturday: 2, 2, 1, 1
Sunday: 5, 4, 4, 1

When you're done, your spreadsheet will look like this:

Entering Simple Addition Formula

The first thing we'll do to our spreadsheet from the previous section is to add up all those numbers, the ones going down under the days of the week headings. The total for each day of the week will be placed on Row 9. So Monday's total will go in cell B9, Tuesday's total will go in cell C9, and so on.

Here's our spreadsheet again:

Our first total will go in cell B9.

 

Adding up in Excel

Excel needs to know which cells you want to add up. Look at the numbers for the Monday column. We have a 1 in cell B4, a 7 in cell B5, an 8 in cell B6, and a 1 in cell B7. So we want the answer to this:

B4 + B5 + B6 + B7

To let Excel know that this is what we want, try this:

• Click inside cell B9, which is where we want the answer to appear
• Once you've clicked on cell B9, click into the formula bar at the top
• Type this:

B4 + B5 + B6 + B7

When you have entered the formula in the formula bar, press the enter key on your keyboard. Your spreadsheet should look like ours below:

Something has gone wrong! This is not quite what we were expecting. We wanted Excel to add up the numbers for us, but it hasn't done anything except enter the cells we typed.

What went wrong was that we didn't "tell" excel to add up. Excel needs you to type an equals (=) sign first, and then those cell references. If you don't include the equals sign, Excel thinks it's just plain text, and so doesn't do any calculating.

So enter this inside of your formula bar instead:

= B4 + B5 + B6 + B7

In other words, put an equals sign ( = ) before B4. Press your enter key and you should have the correct answer in cell B9.

Now click back inside the formula bar, and delete the equals sign. Press the enter key again. You should then just have the same text as in the image above. We're doing this to show you an easier way to add up - with the SUM function.