Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Excel Basics – The Anatomy of a Spreadsheet”.
Foreign, the details of using Microsoft Excel. It’S important that you first learn what I call the anatomy of a spreadsheet and, in addition to that, the layout of Microsoft Excel how to switch from one ribbon to the next and how to find the different options and features in Excel. Let’S get started so whenever you start up Excel it should take you first to a screen similar to this one. You may see a list of recently used spreadsheets, but you’ll also have a way to create a new blank workbook and I’m going to click here. Just to show that there will often also be templates that you can click to open up and use.
You can also search and there’s a button here to more templates, but I’m just going to click blank workbook to open up a brand new, completely blank workbook in Microsoft, Excel and before we create anything in this workbook. Let’S talk about the anatomy of a spreadsheet when you’re working in Microsoft Excel, you will always have at least one sheet. You can see here in the lower left. It says sheet 1 one, but it’s possible to have multiple sheets and all of those sheets, collectively together, are called a workbook right now. My workbook just has the one spreadsheet in Excel. Spreadsheets are made up of columns.
You can see. This is column e. This is column C, this is column K and when I select the letter for that column, the entire column gets selected. We also have rows in Excel.
This is Row three. This is row nine. This is row 10., so every column has a column letter and every row has a row number now. The intersection of a column and a row is what we call a cell. So, for example, this cell here is the intersection of column e and row 10., and an Excel workbook can contain over 17 billion cells when you click on a cell that becomes the active cell now, one of the most powerful things about the cells in Excel is That each one can be described by the intersection of its column and row, so, for example, this is cell f8 and that’s how you say it f8. What cell is this? This is cell L4, and this is cell B7.
Now, because of this fact that you can describe every single cell in Microsoft, Excel there’s a lot of exciting possibilities that come about because of that and you’ll see that, as you begin using Excel more, the next part of the anatomy of a spreadsheet is range. A range is a collection of cells that are generally grouped together, so I’ve clicked and dragged to select a group of cells in Excel. This is a range and we can also describe every range in Microsoft Excel once again using the column, letters and the row numbers the way you do this is you start in the upper left corner of the range, and you describe that cell so D4 through and Then you go to the lower right corner and describe that cell J 14.. So the description of this range, its reference based, basically is D4 through j14 and in Excel.
The way you indicate through is with a colon so D4 through j14. This is very important and will become more and more useful and important as you keep using Excel. So that is the anatomy of a spreadsheet.
We have columns, we have rows, we have cells, the cell that you’ve selected is the active cell and we have ranges, and all of this is done on a sheet or spreadsheet, or it’s also called worksheet. You can add more worksheets by clicking this plus sign. Now.
I have two sheets now I have three sheets, and the collection of all of these sheets together is what we call a workbook now, in addition to the anatomy of the spreadsheet, it’s also important to understand the layout that we have to work with in Microsoft, Excel As you use Excel, you’ll notice that there are tabs across the top of the screen generally you’ll start on the Home tab, but we also have the insert tab, page layout out tab data, tab, Etc. Whenever you click a tab, the tool buttons that you have here below change and this part of the layout is called the ribbon. So if I click the formulas tab, I get the formulas ribbon. If I click the view tab the ribbon completely changes. Now I have the view ribbon and each ribbon is divided up into groups.
You can see the groups are separated by lines. So I have a charts group. I have a Tours group, a comments group, a tables group Etc. Now not all of the options can fit in such a small group, for example. My charts group is not big enough to hold all of the options, so some of the groups have what I call a launch button, or sometimes it’s called a dialog launcher, but I’ll just call it a launch button.
Not all of the groups have these launch buttons, but if you click on a launch button, it’ll open up with even more options than could normally fit in the space provided on the ribbon. In addition to the tab, herbs, the ribbons and the groups and the launch buttons, we also have some other layout features that you really need to know over here on the right. We have a scroll bar that you can use to move down your spreadsheet and up the spreadsheet. We also have a horizontal scroll bar underneath that we have a zoom slider. If I slide this to the right, I zoom in on the spreadsheet, if I slide it to the left, I zoom out on the spreadsheet doing this does not change the data at all it just Zooms in or out. I have some view buttons here in the lower right corner. I can go to page break preview or the page layout view, but most Excel users spend most of their time in normal view. Here in the upper left, we have What’s called the name box.
Whenever you click on a cell, you can look in the name box to see the description of that cell or the name for that cell and later you’ll. Learn that this name box can do even more for you here at the top of my Excel layout. I have the quick access toolbar and I have customized this. Yours may look different, but this gives me quick access to some of the most commonly used features in Microsoft, Excel my save button and undo button autosum and more here’s my title for this spreadsheet over here I have my close button.
It looks like an X if I click that the spreadsheet will close and then finally, here I have a very special bar called the formula bar in many cases. This is where you’ll go to enter formulas into Microsoft Excel. So now that you know about the anatomy of a spreadsheet and also the layout in Microsoft, Excel you’re completely ready to begin learning to use Excel at this point, I’m going to click file and save, but because this is my first time saving this document. It’S having me do a save as I need to decide where to save this Excel workbook, so I’m going to click on browse and I’m just going to save it in my documents and I’ll just write a name for it Excel for beginners complete course and Save So at this point now that you’ve watched this video, you are familiar with and you understand the anatomy of a spreadsheet, the different names of the different aspects, the different components of Microsoft Excel so now, you’re ready to learn more Excel Basics.
How could you do that? Well, one of the very best is to go to the technology for teachers and students YouTube channel and you can get there by going to youtube.com forward slash at Tech, teachers and students. There are other ways to get there too, and at the end of this video you’ll find a little icon, that you can click that will take you to the channel home page once you get here, you’ll want to make sure that you’re subscribed to the website. If you haven’t already subscribed – and when you get to this channel homepage you’ll see a video here called Excel for beginners the complete course. This is a very long 55 minute video that walks you through all of the Excel Basics that you need.
You could certainly jump into that course and take it step by step through that 55-minute course. Until you understand all the Excel Basics and of course you can rewind, you can skip ahead and if you click to go to the video itself, not just the channel home page. And if you go down here to the bottom of the description area. For the video and click show more you’ll get a table of contents, and you could certainly jump to the parts that you want to learn the things that you want to focus on as you learn Excel. I’M going to click back to show you that, in addition to this complete course of Excel for beginners, I’ve set up a series of videos on Excel that you can watch. This. Is my beginner’s guide to Microsoft Excel it’s a 20 minute video. That might be the perfect next step for you if you’re beginning completely from scratch.
After watching this current video that you just watched and then you could just proceed through watching each of these videos, there’s an arrow here – that you can click to get even more and then once you’ve exhausted all of those videos. I would recommend checking out my playlists. You can do that by clicking here on playlists or you can go down to the bottom of this screen and there’s some created playlists. So here’s one called new Excel videos in newest to oldest order. So when you click here, you will see whatever my most recent Excel video is, and you can watch that once you’ve watched it, you can move on to the next most recent and so on I’ll click back there are other playlists. I have playlists on Google products on Microsoft, Word: Google classroom and many more. If you want the full list of playlists, you can go here to the top of the channel home page and click on playlists, and here you’ll find as you browse through them. Several. That will be helpful to you Excel for beginners. The full playlist is here intermediate excel at Advanced Excel, so there’s almost an unlimited amount of resources and learning that you can take advantage of as you keep learning Excel with technology for teachers and students. Just a quick note for you, as you begin this journey of learning Excel through my channel. Almost every video on the channel, especially those that are about Microsoft, Office Products like Excel PowerPoint and word.
Almost all of them have a practice file that come with them. So if you look at the description for a particular video, just click on show more often you’ll get a table of contents. Sometimes you’ll get chapters, maybe a featured playlist, but here in the description itself, often it will say here’s a link to the practice file. For this video now, sometimes, if you click that link, it will simply download the practice file to your computer. That’S what’s happening for me. Now. It’S downloading a copy of this practice file that I can just click to open up and begin using other times. It may not open up automatically so if that happens to you, what I would recommend is just click and drag to highlight the URL of the practice file and copy it and then go up to the top of your browser window and open up a new browser.
Tab and then just paste in the URL and tap enter on the keyboard. If you’ll do that, 99 of the time you’ll be able to download the practice file to help you follow along as you watch the video. So as we end this video, I want to thank you so much for joining me in learning about the anatomy of a spreadsheet in Microsoft, Excel and also the Microsoft Excel layout. If you found this video to be helpful, please like share and subscribe and when you do click the bell and you’ll be notified. When I post another video, if you’d like to support my channel, you can do that by clicking the thanks button below the video or by supporting me through my patreon account, or by buying Channel merch and you’ll, find more information about those options. In the description below the video .