Introduction

Welcome! Text, Links, Headers, Comments, Templates

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Welcome to Excel Beginner Level 5. In this course we will cover a range of topics for new users, including how to insert different types of text into spreadsheets such as hyperlinks, text boxes, WordArt, and signature lines. We will discuss working with headers and footers, techniques for handling large spreadsheets like freezing panes and splitting windows, as well as adding borders and toggling gridlines. The course will also cover formatting tricks like merging and centering cells, using comments, research tools, and downloading templates. This lesson builds on material covered in previous beginner levels.

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Keywords

TechHelp Excel, Excel 2010, freeze panes, split spreadsheet, insert hyperlinks, text boxes, WordArt, signature line, headers and footers, format painter, merge and center, wrap text, comments, borders, gridlines, spell check, thesaurus, templates, stock q

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Transcript

Welcome to Excel 2010 Beginner, level 5, brought to you by ExcelLearningZone.com. I am your instructor, Richard Rost.

Today's class is going to cover a bunch of different topics. These topics do not necessarily fit into any major categories, but I felt they were important to cover for you, the beginner user.

We are going to start out learning how to insert different types of text into our spreadsheets, including hyperlinks, text boxes, WordArt, signature lines, and more. We will learn how to work with headers and footers in our spreadsheets. That is handy if you want to have the same information repeat at the top of each page when you print it, or have things like page numbering or automatic date codes.

We are going to learn some techniques for working with large spreadsheets. We will see how we can freeze the header row or column, and how to split the spreadsheet into two. We are going to learn how to add borders to our spreadsheets and turn the gridlines on and off.

We are going to learn a lot of different formatting tricks, including merge and center cells, wrap the text in a cell, and how to use the Format Painter. We will learn how to add comments to our spreadsheet, so we can add notes that will automatically hide or pop up whenever we hover over them.

We will learn about Excel's research functions, including the spell check, thesaurus, language translator, and I will show you how to get live stock quotes off the web. We will learn how to work with templates from Microsoft Office Online. I will show you how to download free templates, including a calendar, an invoice, and a mortgage calculator.

This class is designed to be used with Excel 2010, part of Microsoft Office 2010. If you are using an older version of Excel, you should visit my website at ExcelLearningZone.com and look for my older tutorials covering Excel 2000 through 2007. If you are using Excel 2007, you should have little difficulty following along, as most of the topics covered in this course are the same as with 2007. If you are using Excel 2003 or earlier, you really should either upgrade to Excel 2010 or purchase a tutorial for your older version of Excel, which again you can find on my website.

This is the beginner level 5 course for Microsoft Excel 2010. This class is for the novice user who has little or no experience with Excel outside of my levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 Excel courses. In today's course, we will cover additional topics building on the lessons learned in the first four classes of the series.

Before taking this course, I strongly recommend that you take my Excel beginner levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 courses first. Number 4 covers charts and data tables. If any of these concepts seem unfamiliar to you, stop now and take Excel level 4 before taking this course.

My courses are broken up into four groups: beginner, expert, advanced, and developer. My beginner courses are for novice users who have little or no experience with Microsoft Excel. They are designed to give you an overview of the basic features of Excel and cover just what you need to know to be productive.

When you finish the basics, it is time to move up to the expert series, which is designed for users who are already comfortable with Excel. Expert classes are designed to teach you more about all the standard features of Excel that people use from day to day, and will go into more depth about each topic than the beginner classes. You will learn all about the options, alternatives, shortcuts, tips and tricks, and extra features that we might have skipped over in the beginner lessons.

When you have mastered the expert classes, the advanced lessons are for Excel power users. You will learn how to record macros, build user forms, create your own templates, and many more advanced features that not everyone will use, but they really add enhanced functionality and professionalism to your spreadsheets.

Finally, my developer level courses are designed to teach you how to program in Visual Basic for Applications with Microsoft Excel. This will allow you to create Excel-based programs for your users, automate your spreadsheets, and to integrate Excel tightly with other Microsoft Office applications.

Each of my series are broken down into different levels. For example, the beginner series started with levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, which you should have taken previously, and is followed by level 5. That is this class. Each level teaches you new and different topics in Microsoft Excel, building on the lessons learned in the previous levels.

When you finish all the beginner classes, move up to the expert series, then advanced, and finally, developer.

Now, let's take a more detailed look at exactly what we are going to learn in today's class.

In lesson 1, we are going to begin working with inserting text into our spreadsheets. We will start off by learning about hyperlinks. We will see how to create a hyperlink to a web page, a hyperlink to an email address, and I will show you how to create a hyperlink to Google Maps so you can link directly to someone's address, for example.

In lesson 2, we are going to continue inserting text into our spreadsheets. We are going to learn about text boxes, WordArt, signature lines, objects, and symbols.

In lesson 3, we are going to learn to work with the header and footer in our spreadsheets. We will see how to insert a header and footer. We will learn about the three different sections of each header and footer. We will learn how to insert special codes, such as the current page number, the current date and time, and lots more.

In lesson 4, we are going to be looking at the View tab in the Window group. We will learn some tips for working with large sheets, including freezing panes and splitting the spreadsheet window.

In lesson 5, we are going to learn how to add borders to our spreadsheets and we will learn how to print background gridlines.

In lesson 6, we are going to learn some miscellaneous formatting tricks. We are going to learn how to merge and center cells. We will learn about cell orientation and we will see how to use the Format Painter to copy and paste the format of a cell.

You can store additional information inside each cell in your spreadsheet and in lesson 7, we will learn how to do that using something called a comment.

In lesson 8, we are going to learn some of Excel's research features, such as the spell checker, thesaurus, language translator, and I am going to show you how to get live stock quotes from the web.

In lesson 9, we are going to learn how to download templates from Microsoft Office Online. Microsoft has thousands of different templates on their website that you can download for free right inside of Excel. We will take a look at how to download them. We will see a calendar template, an invoice template, and a mortgage calculator template.

If you need help with the topics covered in today's lessons, please feel free to post your questions in the Excel Interactive Student forums. If you are watching this course using my custom video player software or online in my web theater, you should see the student forum for each lesson appear in a small window next to the class videos if you have an active internet connection. Here you will see all of the questions that other students have asked, as well as my responses to them, and any other comments that other students have made.

I encourage you to read through these questions and answers as you start each lesson and feel free to post your own questions and comments as well.

If you are not watching your lessons online, you can still visit the student forums later by visiting ExcelLearningZone.com/forums. To get the most out of this course, I recommend you sit back, relax, and watch each lesson completely through once without trying to do anything on your computer. Then replay the lesson from the beginning and follow along with my examples. Actually create the same spreadsheet that I make in the video. Build this spreadsheet with me step by step.

Do not try to apply what you are learning right now to other projects until you have mastered the sample spreadsheet. If you get stuck or do not understand something, watch the video again from the beginning or tell me what is wrong in the student forums.

Most importantly, keep an open mind. Excel might seem intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, you will see that it is really easy to use.

Intro

Quiz

Q1. Which of the following is NOT one of the types of text you can insert into a spreadsheet as taught in this lesson?
A. Hyperlinks
B. Text boxes
C. Audio comments
D. WordArt

Q2. What is the purpose of a header or footer in a spreadsheet?
A. To add formulas to a worksheet
B. To display repeating information on each printed page
C. To freeze panes in your worksheet
D. To insert charts onto your sheet

Q3. What feature allows you to keep the header row visible as you scroll through a large spreadsheet?
A. Wrap Text
B. Merge Cells
C. Freeze Panes
D. Conditional Formatting

Q4. How do you add notes to individual cells that appear when you hover over them?
A. By inserting a comment
B. By using the Format Painter
C. By adding a hyperlink
D. By merging and centering the cell

Q5. What function in Excel helps you check for spelling mistakes in your worksheet?
A. Translator
B. Thesaurus
C. Spell Check
D. Stock Quotes

Q6. Which feature allows you to copy formatting from one cell to another?
A. Format Painter
B. Gridlines
C. Merge Cells
D. Text Orientation

Q7. For what purpose might you want to access and download templates from Microsoft Office Online?
A. To add new fonts to Excel
B. To get pre-designed calendars, invoices, or calculators
C. To update to the latest version of Excel
D. To import data from Access

Q8. What should you do if you find the material in this course unfamiliar?
A. Skip the lesson and move to advanced courses
B. Take the previous beginner courses first
C. Try expert-level courses instead
D. Start using macros immediately

Q9. What is recommended before applying new Excel knowledge to other projects?
A. Complete the sample spreadsheet with the video tutorial
B. Download additional add-ins from the web
C. Immediately implement it into your own workbooks
D. Ask other users to do it for you

Q10. What are the four main groups of courses mentioned in the lesson?
A. Basic, Intermediate, Professional, Master
B. Beginner, Expert, Advanced, Developer
C. User, Admin, Creator, Analyst
D. Novice, Skilled, Specialist, Programmer

Q11. Which of the following is NOT a research feature mentioned in Excel?
A. Spell checker
B. Thesaurus
C. Language translator
D. Chart designer

Q12. Where can you go if you need additional help on a lesson topic?
A. Contact Microsoft directly
B. Visit the Excel Interactive Student forums
C. Search for random videos on the internet
D. Use only the help button in Excel

Answers: 1-C; 2-B; 3-C; 4-A; 5-C; 6-A; 7-B; 8-B; 9-A; 10-B; 11-D; 12-B

DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Summary

Today's video from Excel Learning Zone covers several key Excel 2010 skills for beginners who are ready to move on from the basics. I am your instructor, Richard Rost. In this session, I will be pulling together a variety of important topics that do not necessarily fall into one major category, but are essential for anyone who is getting familiar with Excel.

We are starting off by looking at how to insert different types of text and objects into spreadsheets. This includes adding hyperlinks, creating text boxes to display extra information right on your spreadsheet, using WordArt for stylized text, setting up signature lines, and working with a few other useful additions. We will also go over how to use headers and footers, which is especially helpful if you want details like page numbers or dates to repeat at the top or bottom of each printed page.

Next, I will introduce some useful techniques for managing large spreadsheets. I will show you how to keep header rows or columns visible as you scroll by freezing panes, and how to split your window so you can view several parts of your spreadsheet at once. Borders, as well as how to toggle background gridlines on and off, will also be covered as a way to make your sheets look more organized and professional.

Formatting is another big part of this lesson. You will see how to merge and center cells, wrap text inside a cell so it displays clearly, and use the Format Painter to quickly copy formatting from one place to another. Adding comments to cells is another useful skill, since it lets you store extra notes that pop up when you hover over a cell.

Excel also offers some built-in research functions. In this lesson, I will show you how to use spell check, thesaurus, and even a language translator. There is also a demonstration of how to bring in live stock quotes from the web, which can be valuable for those who need real-time data in their spreadsheets.

Templates can save you a lot of time, so I will show you how to find and download free templates from Microsoft Office Online. We will look specifically at templates for calendars, invoices, and mortgage calculators.

This course is designed for Excel 2010 as part of Microsoft Office 2010. If you are working with an older version, I recommend looking for my earlier tutorials, especially if you are using Excel 2003 or before since those have significant differences. Excel 2007 users should be able to follow along closely, since the features are very similar.

If this is your first time with my courses, it is important to know that this is the fifth course in my beginner series. This level builds on lessons from the first four courses, which cover everything from basic operations to charts and data tables. If anything I mention here sounds unfamiliar, consider reviewing those earlier lessons before continuing.

All of my courses are divided into four groups: beginner, expert, advanced, and developer. Beginner courses like this one provide a solid foundation for new users. Once you are confident with those basics, the expert series goes deeper into all the day-to-day features of Excel, sharing more tips, tricks, and alternatives. Advanced classes are designed for power users who want to do things like record macros, create their own templates, and further enhance their spreadsheets with professional touches. Developer courses move into programming with Visual Basic for Applications, so you can create custom functions, automate tasks, and integrate Excel with other Office applications.

Each group is broken into separate levels that build on the knowledge from the previous courses. This class is beginner level 5.

Here is a quick breakdown of what you will learn in today's class:

Lesson 1 focuses on inserting different types of text, beginning with hyperlinks. You will see how to link to web pages, email addresses, and even create links to locations on Google Maps.

Lesson 2 continues with additional text and object types. We will add text boxes, use WordArt for special effects, insert signature lines, and work with symbols and other objects.

Lesson 3 covers headers and footers. You will learn to insert them, understand their three sections, and add special codes like page numbers or dates.

Lesson 4 takes a closer look at the View tab and Window group, where you will learn techniques for navigating large sheets, such as freezing panes and splitting the window for easier management.

Lesson 5 is all about borders and printing options for gridlines, enhancing the visual presentation of your spreadsheet.

Lesson 6 presents several formatting tips, including how to merge and center cells, adjust cell orientation, and use the Format Painter for fast formatting.

Lesson 7 introduces cell comments, which let you store extra information within a cell that can be revealed when needed.

Lesson 8 explores some of Excel's research features. I will demonstrate the spell checker, thesaurus, language translator, and how to include live stock quotes from the web.

Lesson 9 shows how to download free templates from the Microsoft Office Online collection. You will see examples like a calendar, invoice, and mortgage calculator template to help speed up your work.

If you have any questions or get stuck with any of these topics, I encourage you to use the Excel Interactive Student forums. If you are watching through my custom video player or in my web theater, you will see the forums next to the videos (as long as you have an active internet connection). Other students' questions and my answers are posted there as well, which can be helpful as you work through these lessons. If you are taking this course offline, you can always access the forums through my website.

For the best learning experience, I recommend that you watch each lesson all the way through before trying to work along. Then replay the lesson, pausing as needed while you create the same spreadsheet I use for the example. Focus on mastering those steps first before trying to apply what you have learned to your own projects. If anything is unclear, watch the video again or reach out on the student forums.

Keep an open mind as you learn. While Excel can seem overwhelming at first, you will find that with practice, it becomes quite intuitive.

You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.

Topic List

Inserting hyperlinks to web pages and email addresses
Creating hyperlinks to Google Maps
Inserting text boxes into spreadsheets
Using WordArt in spreadsheets
Adding signature lines
Inserting objects and symbols
Working with headers and footers
Understanding header and footer sections
Inserting page numbers, date, and time in headers and footers
Freezing header rows and columns
Splitting the worksheet window
Adding borders to spreadsheets
Printing gridlines
Merging and centering cells
Changing cell orientation
Using Format Painter to copy formatting
Inserting and using cell comments
Using spell check
Using thesaurus
Using language translator
Getting live stock quotes from the web
Downloading templates from Microsoft Office Online
Using calendar, invoice, and mortgage calculator templates

Article

Welcome to this tutorial for beginners in Microsoft Excel. In this lesson, you will learn a range of skills that are important for anyone new to Excel, especially if you want to become more productive with your spreadsheets. These techniques will help you build and format spreadsheets that not only look professional but also make your data easier to understand and share.

Let us start by exploring how to insert different types of text into your spreadsheet. Instead of just typing plain words, Excel allows you to add hyperlinks, text boxes, WordArt, signature lines, and more. Adding a hyperlink is easy. For example, if you want to link to a website, select the cell where you want the link, right-click, and choose Hyperlink. Enter the web address and click OK. You can also link to an email address by entering mailto: followed by the email. For something more creative, you could create a hyperlink to a map location by pasting a Google Maps URL. This is useful if you want to provide directions or reference a specific address.

Text boxes and WordArt add a visual flair to your spreadsheets. To add a text box, go to the Insert tab and select Text Box. Click anywhere on your spreadsheet and type in your text. With WordArt, click Insert, then WordArt, and pick a style you like. WordArt can make titles or headers stand out. You can click and drag these objects to position them, and you can resize them by clicking and dragging their borders.

Signature lines are helpful if you need to add an approval field to a document. Go to the Insert tab, choose Signature Line, and fill in the information such as the signer's name and title. This adds a placeholder for a digital or print signature.

If you want certain information to appear at the top or bottom of every printed page, headers and footers are essential. They allow you to add page numbers, dates, filenames, or custom text that repeats on every page. To add a header or footer, click on the Insert tab and select Header & Footer. In header and footer view, you will see three sections: left, center, and right. You can type text in any section, or use the Header & Footer Tools to insert elements like current date, current time, sheet name, or page number. For example, you might add 'Page &[Page] of &[Pages]' to display the current page and total number of pages.

When you work with large sheets that have lots of rows or columns, keeping your headers visible as you scroll can save a lot of hassle. Freezing panes lets you keep certain rows or columns fixed while you scroll through the rest of your data. Click on the row below your headers, then go to the View tab and select Freeze Panes. You can also freeze columns in a similar way by selecting the appropriate column before choosing Freeze Panes.

Splitting the spreadsheet window can help when you need to view two parts of the same sheet at once. On the View tab, click Split. This will divide your window into sections that you can scroll independently. This is especially helpful when comparing distant rows or columns without losing your place.

Borders let you draw lines around cells or entire ranges, making key data stand out. Select the cells, go to the Home tab, and choose the Borders icon. You can pick from options like All Borders, Outside Borders, or even create custom borders. If you want gridlines to appear when you print, go to Page Layout and check Print under the Gridlines options. This way, your printouts will look as clear as your on-screen view.

There are several formatting tricks that can help present your data neatly. Merge and center combines multiple cells into one large cell and centers the text. Just select the cells, then click Merge & Center in the Home tab. If your text wraps past the cell edge, you can use Wrap Text, which lets your text display on multiple lines within a cell. Click on the cell, then choose Wrap Text in the Home tab. If you have a formatting style you want to copy to other cells, select the formatted cell, click Format Painter, and apply that formatting elsewhere by clicking the target cells.

You can add comments to your spreadsheet for notes or explanations that only appear when you hover your mouse over a cell. Right-click a cell and select Insert Comment. Type your note and click away. Comments are useful for reminders, instructions, or collaboration with others without cluttering the data.

Excel also includes several research tools. The built-in spell checker reviews your entries for errors. Go to the Review tab and click Spelling. There is also a thesaurus for finding synonyms by selecting a word, going to the Review tab, and choosing Thesaurus. The language translator can help if you are working with multilingual data. These tools help ensure your spreadsheet is accurate and polished.

If you need financial data such as live stock quotes, Excel can retrieve this from the web. You can use the Data tab to import online data, such as stock prices or currency rates. Start by clicking From Web, entering the URL of the data source, and following the prompts to import the data.

Templates can save a lot of time when starting new projects. Excel offers a library of free templates that cover calendars, invoices, mortgage calculators, and more. Go to the File tab, select New, and search for the type of template you need. Click on a template and choose Download to open it in Excel. You can customize the template as needed and save it for your own use.

Following these steps and practicing each technique as you go will help you build a strong foundation in Excel. If you encounter any problems, revisit the material and try again. As you get comfortable, explore more features or answer questions from fellow users. Soon you will find Excel is much easier than it first appears and you will be well on your way to mastering spreadsheet skills.

Primary Topics

inserting hyperlinks, text boxes, WordArt, signature lines, objects, inserting symbols, headers and footers, freezing panes, splitting windows, adding borders, gridlines, cell merging and formatting, comments, spell check, templates

Secondary Topics

cell orientation, format painter, research tools, live stock quotes, language translator, using templates