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Intro

In this video, we will get started with Microsoft Excel 2003 and cover the basics of the user interface, working with workbooks and worksheets, entering and formatting data, using the autofill handle, adding borders, saving and opening files, resizing columns, setting up page layout options for printing, creating custom headers and footers, and performing simple sorts and calculations, including averages. This is a great introduction if you are new to Excel or need a quick refresher on the fundamentals.

Transcript

Check one two, check, testing one two. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Microsoft Excel course. My name is Richard Rost. I will be your instructor today and for the remainder of this course.

If you have not already downloaded the Excel One class outline, it is in the outline section of the website. Please feel free to download it. I will try to follow it in class as much as I can, although I do jump around sometimes.

Also, if you have not joined us in the chat room, come on in. If you have any questions, you can ask them in the chat room.

We are going to begin by opening up Excel. I am going to assume you know how to find it. It is not going to be on your Start menu or your Start Programs. Microsoft Excel.

Here we go. Let me resize lines so it fits on my screen. I have a little window to work with here. Here we go. I am going to shrink it up. There we go.

This is Microsoft Excel. Let's talk first about the parts of the Excel interface. If you are familiar with Word or any of the other Microsoft Office applications, you will find that Excel is similar to them in a lot of ways.

Across the top, it says Microsoft Excel Book 1. What does that mean? Microsoft Excel is the title of the program that we are working with. Book 1 is the name of the workbook that we are working with. Unlike some other spreadsheet programs, Excel lets you store multiple sheets in a file called the workbook.

As you can see on the bottom, here are Sheet 1, Sheet 2, and Sheet 3, and we will talk about those sheets later.

Across the top here, it says File, Edit, View, etc. These are our pull down menus. We are going to learn a lot about these pull down menus a little bit later on.

Down below that, we have our toolbars: Open, Save, Print Preview, Copy, Paste, and so on. We will learn about these buttons as we go on. Then we have our Formatting toolbar, which is used to change the format of our data. There are some new things over here, like Toronto style and comma.

We will talk about those today as well.

Below here is the spreadsheet. You can see the spreadsheet consists of columns that go this way and rows that go that way. That is column C and row 3, and where column C and row 3 meet, that is called a cell. It is cell C3, and we generally refer to it with the column first. That would be cell E8.

We also have ranges of cells. We click and drag the mouse to create a range of cells. That is a range from B2 to B6. That is a range from C3 to E3. Those are called ranges. Ranges can also go like that: that is the range from B2 through E6.

We will use ranges to create our calculations and to calculate some of the columns later on.

We have our Sheet tabs. These are handy for doing multiple sheets that are related and stored in the same book. For example, column law statements - you can do each month.

We have our scroll bars up and down. I am going to assume that you have taken our Windows 101 and 102 classes and you know how to use scroll bars.

Across the very bottom we have our Status bar. Sometimes we have some useful information.

The chat room window is asking where to find the class outlines. When you log into the class, on the main menu there, you will see the class join the chat room. You have to have a program called Winship. You will need to do the PDF file. There are links to download both of those programs.

Now we know what we are going to be doing today. We will be storing information on our students and test grades. The first thing I want to do is type in a list of students. I am going to click on cell A1.

Now I will type in a list of students. Let's start off with a header. I will type in the word Student and then press Enter. Enter moves me down to the next row. Or you can use the Down Arrow on your keyboard.

Let's type in a list of students: we have Chris, Enter, Alex, Enter, Jan, Enter, and Pat.

Now, let's type in some test grades. You can either use the arrow keys on the keyboard. I prefer using the keyboard myself. Or you can take the mouse and click on the next column, B1.

Now let's type in a column for our test grades. I am going to type in Test 1, Tab, Test 2, Tab, Test 3, Tab, and so on. The Tab moves me across to the next column. You can also use the Right Arrow key.

Now I will type in some test grades.

I used to get yelled at by the students because I had Joe Bob soon. I changed them so you can't tell who it is.

Now, this is fine, but let's make this look a little better. Part of making spreadsheets is making them look presentable.

The first thing I don't like is that the headers across the top row line up on the left-hand side of the cell. Let's make Test 1, Test 2, Test 3 bold. I will type in some test lines.

I am missing a couple because I have my window shrunken down so I can see more of the toolbar.

Now I have my header row.

Now I could go down all the way and copy and paste. Let's go Monday.

Notice how you do not have to hit enter or tab, and then you can grab the autofill handle while you are still editing your cell. That means you do not have to click off and click back on it again.

So we got 949-596. What about Monday and Tuesday? I am too lazy to type those days in, so let's grab the autofill handle and fill it backward. You can go backward too.

Next week, let's see if we can have the 78th. Next week will be the 9th, 9902. And let's drag it across.

I should not have enough data. Let me resize these just a bit. I should not have updated it to go down now.

I could highlight these two and then drag them down. But even better, I can highlight all of these and drag the whole thing down.

There we go. There is my calendar.

Let's put some borders around these. Let's highlight all these guys. Then, right up here, right next to the colors, there is a border button. Now you have to drag down the border menu. Which means, if you do not use this, you will not see any borders when you print.

This is a bottom border, the border on the left, the border on the right. Most of these I do not use. But the one that we've used in here is 'All Borders' and 'Around Outside Borders.' This is a box around the selected range.

I am going to click on 'All Borders.' Notice what I have here now: I have borders around all my cell units.

I have not shown you this yet, but I just wanted to show you this. When you print it, you will see borders around it. We will talk about print views.

So there, I put together a real quick calendar. You can leave blank rows between those. You can type stuff in for what you have on various days. There is all kinds of stuff you can do with that.

Let's save our work. Time to save. So I will come over here and hit the Save button. It looks like a floppy disk. It will ask us for a file name.

Let's go ahead and create a new folder real quick. I want to put it in here. Let's call this 'My Documents for Class.' Let's go into 'My Documents.' I will show you how to do that in a future class.

I'm going to do this because I have a whole bunch of other spreadsheets on here from different classes, and I want to keep it organized.

So let's type in here: Excel Online Class 9402. I like to put the date in my file name so I know when I created the book, the workbook. You do not have to do that if you do not want to. It is just something I do, especially when I have got 15 classes a week sometimes.

All right, so you saved that work. How do you get it back? Let me close it. How do you get it back?

The easiest way to get it back is to come in here and just hit the Open button. That will put you right back into your My Documents folder, usually. You guys are usually working in My Documents folder. I created a custom folder just for this class.

There it is. You click on it, you hit Open, and you get it back.

There are other faster ways to bring it back. Usually, if you work in Excel, you would probably have maybe three or four spreadsheets that you work with on a regular basis.

If you click on the File menu, you will see on the bottom down here the last four spreadsheets that you worked on. You can just click on one, and it will open again. I have like three or four that I work on a regular basis, and that's it.

You can click on the Documents item on your Start menu, click on Start and Documents, and you will see all of them.

You can also just go right to the My Documents folder on your Windows desktop, and open up the next class. Assuming you are starting with any of your My Documents folder, which you should be.

There are Windows 200-level classes, 201, where I show how to make folders and move them around, create shortcuts, and all that.

All right, so if you have saved that work, now I will continue on with our gradebook.

Here we are, on Sheet 1.

Let's say I am going in here and I'm highlighting a bunch of stuff here, and I accidentally hit Delete. How do I undo that delete? There is an Undo button right there on your toolbar. Click on Undo, and it will undo the last thing you did. A little fix for your last mistake. If you have taken my Word class, we talk a lot about Undo there as well.

Let's say that I do not really care for the way that some of these numbers go out to no decimal places. Some of them, these we got lucky with these numbers. These all go out to two. But sometimes, let me see if I could put a...

There we go. I am going to get one to come out to three decimal places. Some come out to none, some come out to one. I want them all to look uniform. How do I do that?

First, let's select all of our numbers. Right over here, the toolbar has two buttons: Increase Decimal and Decrease Decimal.

Now, you would think, if I click on Increase Decimal, it will increase everybody by one decimal point. It will bring this one out to one, this one out to three, this one out to four. But it does not work that way.

See how this first one is white? Well, that is the leader of the bunch here. Whatever changes you make will affect it, and then everybody else will follow suit. So the way it works is if I hit Increase Decimal, what happens?

See, this one was increased out to one decimal place and then everybody else in the pack was made to look like it. That is what you do. Highlight them all first and hit the Increase Decimal. You can hit it again, increase out to two or three or four or five or six.

I think one is probably plenty for student grades.

I mentioned this earlier. I did not show it to you. If you get this happening where your column is too narrow, and you start to see those pound symbols, you need to just make your column wider.

How do you do that? Come up here in the header above the columns. This thing is the A, B, C, D as a header. When you slide the mouse to the edge of a column header, you will get that little double-sided arrow. Click right there, hold it down, and drag, and you can change the width of the column. Click and drag. You can make it narrower or wider.

If you double-click on that, it makes the column exactly as wide as it needs to be to fit the data.

You can also resize multiple columns. If you click and drag and highlight multiple columns like that, you can then resize any one of them and all of them will get the same width.

I will show you that again. I will highlight all four of these. Click and drag any one of them and they will all be resized the same width.

Likewise, you can also double-click and they will all get resized to as wide as they need to be.

So, that is resizing our columns.

Let's take a look at some options for printing.

We have our spreadsheet all set up. Let's see about printing it. Now, we already showed you the Print Preview. Let's click on it again. Here it is: the white piece of paper with a magnifying glass. Click on that, and this is what your sheet will look like when you actually print it.

Notice how you get a magnifying glass. You can click and zoom in. You can click again to zoom out.

But you get this little teeny tiny spreadsheet up here in the corner. I want to make this fill up more of the page. I want to rotate it because it should be on its side. There is a whole bunch of options for that.

Let's close this. Click on File, Page Setup. You get the Page Setup window.

Now, the first thing we see here is we have got Portrait versus Landscape. A little spreadsheet like this lends itself to being Landscape, doesn't it? Let's click on Landscape. Right over here, you can get a print preview right inside this option here.

Hit Print Preview, and there we go. It looks a little better. Our spreadsheet goes this way more.

Hit the Close button up here. That will bring us back to our spreadsheet.

Again, File, Page Setup. Now, instead of having to keep going File > Page Setup, File > Page Setup, you can do this from right within the Print Preview. Watch this: Hit the Print Preview. Right up here, there is a Setup button. That is the same as going into Page Setup. There are some options you cannot change in here, but we will talk about those in a future class.

Down here, we have scaling. There are two things you can use scaling for. There is 'Adjust to' whatever percent of its normal size. That is usually to blow it up. And you have 'Fit to page.' That is usually to shrink it.

Let's say we want to make our spreadsheet a little bit bigger. That is kind of tiny. So let's say 'Adjust to 200 percent of its normal size.' It will make it big. There we go. We blow it up, nice and big. Let me resize that window a little bit here.

Let's go back in and set up. Hit the Setup button.

Now, the 'Fit to 1 page wide' on Page Setup gives you a way to shrink a big spreadsheet down if you need to. If you made a spreadsheet that filled up one page and then there was like one column overflowing onto Page 2, you had to go back in and resize the columns and make everything fit. Well, this is a nice little feature because you can say, click on this and it will fit '1 page wide by 1 page tall.' Or, you can have three pages wide and just one page tall, or whatever dimensions you want, and it will shrink the spreadsheet down to fit that size. It will not blow it up that way. If you want to blow it up and make it bigger, use the 'Adjust to' option.

Paper size: letter, legal, and so on. Print quality is just the basic DPI setting. Usually, good enough is 600 DPI. If you have a 1200 DPI printer, you can click on that. It will make the text a bit sharper, or 300 DPI for a lower resolution print.

First page number: if you want to put a page number on here, we will talk about that in a minute. That is handy if you want to insert your spreadsheet inside of an existing publication or book.

Let's click on the Margins tab. There are the margins - how much room is around the edge of the spreadsheet. I will leave those. If you want to change these, you can use the up arrows or you can type a number right in here.

Down here, I like these options: 'Center on page horizontally and vertically.' Click on those. There we go. It centers our spreadsheet horizontally and vertically on the page.

First page number: if you want to start page numbering at a specific number, you can type it in to increase the page number.

Let's go back to Setup. Let's go to the Header and Footer tab.

Now, headers and footers are kind of neat. You can put headers and footers on the top and bottom of your page.

You can pick from any of these pre-existing headers. Drop this box down, and you will see Page 1 of 1, Sheet 1, Confidential, etc. I do not really like any of these, so I am going to teach you how to make a custom header.

Click on the Custom Header button.

Now there are three sections: Left section, center section, right section. That is top left, center, and right of your page. You can put whatever you want in here. Let's say in here I will put "Mr. Smith Class." Hit OK, and you will see it across the top of your page.

If I hit OK again, you will see it on the sheet.

You can also put special codes in there, like the page number, the name of the file, and so on. How do we do that? Let's go back into Setup. Click on Custom Header again.

Let's go over to the right section. Let's put the page number. I will type in the word "Page," space, and hit this little button right here. It will put the code in there. It says &Page. That is going to be replaced with the current page number. So if you have a five-page spreadsheet, the page numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Hit OK. Hit OK again, and there you go. It says Page 1.

Let's go back to Setup again. Go over to the Footer section. Click Custom Footer. Custom Footer works the same way.

Here is a date and time that the spreadsheet was last modified. So just put the date on there. That will show the date and time that it was last modified. These buttons over here will give you the name of the file and the sheet tab name. Usually, the name of the file is good enough for me. So, click on the right section, hit Name of File, and hit OK.

There you go. You can see the date it was last modified and the name of the file. If you have a printout of the spreadsheet and want to make some changes, if you do not know where you saved it, or what the file name was, this is handy. That is usually handy for in-house documents, in-house spreadsheets.

You can also put the total number of pages. Let's go back to the header. Put the total number of pages over here. So, at the end, type " of ", and then click on this button right there, which is &Pages. We have the word Page, the code for the page number, the word "of," and then &Pages at the end. Hit OK, and there we go: Page 1 of 1. Hit OK again. There we go.

You have your custom header and custom footer.

There is some other stuff in here too. We will talk about this in a future class. Here are some simple options for turning gridlines on or off. You can see gridlines, but since we have borders, we do not need that. Black and white will force it to print in black and white even if you have a color printer. If you do not want to waste ink, you can use that. Draft quality will remove all the graphics and borders and stuff again for quick prints.

Row and column headings is kind of neat - that's if you want to print the ABC and 123 up and down the side.

We will come back to talk about some of those advanced options in a later class.

Click Close and go back to our spreadsheet. There we go. That is how we do some basic printing and put a header and footer on it.

Let's hit Save. Save our work again.

Let's talk about sorting. Sorting our data. Let's say I want to sort based on my student names.

The rule is: Highlight what you want to sort, and then hit the Sort buttons. Right here: A to Z, Z to A. Sort ascending, sort descending.

Now remember, "ascending" has nothing to do with the back of a donkey. That was a joke.

So, highlight my student names and hit the sort ascending button. That's not good. Notice what happened: it sorted the names, but it did not take the grades with them. I just scrambled all my grades. Be careful with that. Whatever you highlight is what gets sorted. If you do not include the grades, they will not get sorted.

Undo that, so everyone gets their grades back. Make sure you highlight the names and the supporting data that goes with them. Click and drag. If you do not, you are going to scramble all your numbers.

Now, if I hit sort ascending, now we can see that Alex, Chris, Jan, and Pat all have their same grades.

What if I do not want to sort by the student name? What if I want to sort by the final? Actually, we forgot to do the average for each student. Let me resize this a little bit.

Let's add an average over here for each student. Type "Average." Enter. Notice how it took the format from the cell next to it.

What's the formula going to be? =AVERAGE( ), open parentheses. I like to use my mouse, so I'll click and drag out the range. There we go: =AVERAGE(B2:E2). See how you can easily see that? Enter. Then I will autofill that down. Click and drag the fill handle down.

Notice this dotted line over here. Now that we have set up a custom size for our spreadsheet, when we did that 200 percent blow up, Excel knows where the edge of the page is. So that's what that dotted line is. If you go over that, you are on page two.

So now, let's sort by average. Here's the easy way to do it. Start over at the averages column and then go backward. See how this cell here is white? That is the column that will get sorted. Just like when we went the other way, 'Student' was the one that was highlighted.

If you go backward this way and highlight, you will see that 'Average' is the one that is highlighted, or is white. Now I will hit the sort descending button. That will sort descending based on the averages.

What if you want to sort based on something in the middle, like Test 2? How do you do that? Highlight your data, then using the Tab key, go Tab, Tab, Tab, Tab to the column that you want to sort by. That is the column that will now control the sorting. Now you can come over here and hit the sort ascending or descending button.

What if you want to sort by multiple columns? What if you want to sort by average and then by final, if you have two averages that are tied? Let me cheat here and give this guy a 95 average - just so I know I'm blowing away my calculations. I will give this guy a 95 average as well.

Now I want to sort by the averages, and if they are tied, sort by the final. Highlight everybody. This time, we cannot just do it with the button. We have to actually go up and click on Data, then Sort. Here you can see you can sort by up to three columns.

Sort by Average descending, then by Final descending. You can do that up to three columns. If the averages are tied, then sort by the Final. Hit OK. There we go: the averages are first and then the finals.

That is sorting in a nutshell.

Any questions? Drop them in the chat or email me.

We are going to break here for today. We have only one more topic to cover: charting. That is a good spot to pick up in the next class. I do not want to start on charting because charting is a 15- to 20-minute topic. So we will break here, and in the next class we'll start off with charting.

Next week, we are also going to get into some advanced tricks like IF statements. For example, if a student gets a passing or failing grade, if the average is greater than 65, put the word PASS there; if not, put the word FAIL.

We will do some advanced graphing and charting. We will do some stuff with lookup tables. All the fun stuff is coming up. This is just the basics and fundamentals.

I hope you learned some things. If you have any questions, I will hang out in the chat room for about another 5-10 minutes. Feel free to ask questions there. Or you can email me at [email protected].

There's my email address. Feel free to email me if you have any questions. Otherwise, we will see you next week, same time, same channel. Bye.

Quiz

Q1. In Microsoft Excel, what is the main difference between a workbook and a worksheet?
A. A worksheet contains multiple workbooks.
B. A workbook contains multiple worksheets.
C. They are two names for the same thing.
D. A workbook contains only one worksheet.

Q2. What is a cell in Excel?
A. The intersection of a column and a row
B. A toolbar button
C. A sheet tab
D. The name of a workbook

Q3. How do you select a range of cells in Excel?
A. Right-click each cell
B. Double-click the first cell and last cell
C. Click and drag the mouse across the cells you want to include
D. Press Alt+Enter

Q4. What is the function of the autofill handle in Excel?
A. It deletes the contents of the cell
B. It fills a selected range with data based on a pattern
C. It saves your workbook
D. It opens the help menu

Q5. What is the easiest way to make all grades display the same number of decimal places?
A. Manually type in the decimal for each cell
B. Use the toolbar buttons Increase Decimal or Decrease Decimal
C. Change the font size
D. Delete any extra decimal digits

Q6. What happens if your column is too narrow to display your data in Excel?
A. The data is lost
B. The unused space is shaded gray
C. The column displays pound symbols (####)
D. Excel increases the column width automatically

Q7. How can you quickly resize columns to fit their contents in Excel?
A. Double-click the edge of a column header
B. Right-click and choose Format Cells
C. Drag the cell from the corner of the spreadsheet
D. Use the Save As function

Q8. Which option would you choose in Page Setup to rotate the printed page to "on its side"?
A. Portrait
B. Vertical
C. Landscape
D. Streamline

Q9. What does the "Fit to 1 page wide by 1 page tall" option in Page Setup do?
A. Makes all text bold
B. Shrinks the spreadsheet to fit on one printed page
C. Increases the font size
D. Duplicates the sheet content

Q10. Where do you add custom headers and footers for a printed Excel sheet?
A. The File menu
B. The Tools menu
C. The Header and Footer tab in Page Setup
D. The Data menu

Q11. What special codes can you insert into custom headers or footers?
A. Only text, no codes allowed
B. File name, date/time, page number, total pages
C. Web links only
D. Cell formulas only

Q12. What Excel feature lets you center your spreadsheet on the printed page?
A. The View menu
B. The Margins tab in Page Setup
C. The Home tab
D. The Sort dialog

Q13. If you want to sort a list of student names along with their grades, what is the correct way to do it?
A. Highlight just the names and press sort
B. Highlight both the student names and their grades before sorting
C. Sort the grades, then the names
D. Click on the File menu

Q14. What does the Undo button do in Excel?
A. Redoes an action
B. Repeats the last action multiple times
C. Reverses the last change made
D. Deletes the current worksheet

Q15. Which formula calculates the average grade for a student if their grades are in cells B2, C2, D2, and E2?
A. =SUM(B2:E2)
B. =AVERAGE(B2:E2)
C. =COUNT(B2:E2)
D. =MAX(B2:E2)

Q16. What is the purpose of Print Preview in Excel?
A. Edit sheet colors
B. View how the sheet will look when printed
C. Create a new worksheet
D. Sort the data

Q17. In sorting by multiple criteria (e.g., "Average" then "Final"), which menu do you use?
A. File
B. Data > Sort
C. Home > Format
D. Insert > Table

Q18. Which of the following will NOT be included if you only highlight names, and not grades, before sorting?
A. Student names
B. Test grades
C. Both names and grades
D. File names

Q19. To open a file you have previously saved, which method is NOT mentioned in the video?
A. Use the Open button in the toolbar
B. Click the file name in the Documents folder
C. Use the last four recent files in the File menu
D. Email the file to yourself

Q20. What happens if you double-click the edge of a highlighted group of column headers?
A. The columns all get the same width needed for their content
B. The columns are deleted
C. Only the first column is resized
D. The data is sorted in ascending order

Answers: 1-B; 2-A; 3-C; 4-B; 5-B; 6-C; 7-A; 8-C; 9-B; 10-C; 11-B; 12-B; 13-B; 14-C; 15-B; 16-B; 17-B; 18-B; 19-D; 20-A

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 the Excel Learning Zone covers the basics of getting started with Microsoft Excel. My name is Richard Rost, and I'll be your instructor for this course and all upcoming sessions.

If you haven't done so already, make sure to download the Excel One class outline from the website. I'll try to stick to it during class, although I sometimes move around depending on the topics and questions in the chat room. If you have any questions, remember you can always post them in the chat room during class.

To get started, you'll need to launch Excel on your computer. I assume you're familiar with how to do this—usually from your Start menu or list of programs.

When you first open Excel, you might want to resize the window to fit your screen better, especially if you're working with limited space. Once Excel is open, take a look at the layout. If you've used Word or other Microsoft Office applications before, you'll notice that the interface feels familiar.

At the very top of the window, you'll see the program's title bar showing "Microsoft Excel" and the name of your current file, such as "Book 1." In Excel, a file is called a "workbook," and it can contain multiple "worksheets." At the bottom, you'll see tabs labeled "Sheet1," "Sheet2," and "Sheet3." We'll discuss these in detail later on.

Beneath the title bar is the menu bar, which has options like File, Edit, and View. We'll be learning more about these pull-down menus in upcoming lessons. Directly below the menus are toolbars with quick access buttons—Open, Save, Print Preview, Copy, Paste, and more. There's also a Formatting toolbar to change how your data looks. Some functions, such as Toronto style and comma formatting, are new and we'll discuss those as well.

The main area is the spreadsheet itself, arranged in columns (labeled A, B, C, etc.) and rows (numbered 1, 2, 3, etc.). Where a column and row meet is called a "cell"—for example, cell C3 is where column C and row 3 intersect. We reference cells using the column letter first, then the row number, like E8.

You can select a group of cells, known as a "range." Just click and drag with the mouse. For example, B2 to B6 selects a vertical range, while C3 to E3 selects a horizontal one. You can also select larger blocks, such as B2 through E6. Ranges are essential for creating calculations and functions later on.

At the bottom of the workbook, you'll see the sheet tabs. These are helpful for organizing related information within one file, such as keeping monthly statements together. Use the scroll bars on the right and bottom to move through your spreadsheet. I'm assuming you're familiar with scroll bars from earlier Windows classes.

At the very bottom, you'll find the status bar that sometimes shows helpful information about your work.

Some students have asked where to find the class outline. Once you log in to the class, you'll see the option to join the chat room, and you'll find links to download the outline in PDF format as well as any software needed.

For today's project, we'll be creating a simple spreadsheet to store student names and their test grades. Start by going to cell A1 and typing "Student". Pressing Enter moves you to the next row, or you can use the Down Arrow key. Enter student names one per row—Chris, Alex, Jan, and Pat, for example.

In column B, add your test grade columns. Type "Test 1", press Tab to move right, then "Test 2", Tab, "Test 3", and so on. The Tab key moves you horizontally to the next column, but the Right Arrow key works, too. Enter grades for each student.

To make your spreadsheet look more presentable, adjust the formatting. The header labels across the top may be left-aligned by default, but you can make them bold to stand out. If you need to autofill data such as days of the week or dates, you can use the autofill handle—the small box in the lower-right corner of the selected cell—to automatically fill in a series by clicking and dragging.

You can also use the autofill handle to copy cells, fill patterns like Monday to Friday, and duplicate data both forwards and backwards. Resize your columns or rows if you need more space.

For readability, it's helpful to add borders to your table. Highlight the range you want to format, then use the border tool to select "All Borders" or "Around Outside Borders." This makes your gridlines display when you print the document.

Saving your work is crucial. Use the Save button, and choose a folder to keep your files organized. It's a good idea to include the date in your filename so you can keep track of when you created the document, especially if you have multiple classes or projects. Once you've saved the file, opening it again is straightforward—just use the Open button or navigate through your documents folder.

If you make a mistake, such as accidentally deleting data, you can use the Undo button on the toolbar. This will reverse your last action. Undo works for most changes, whether you're working in Excel or even in Word.

Sometimes, numbers will display with inconsistent decimal places. To adjust this, select all the relevant cells, then use the Increase Decimal or Decrease Decimal buttons on the toolbar to get a consistent look. For example, you can set all grades to show one decimal place.

If you see pound signs (###) in a cell, it means the column is too narrow. To fix this, drag the edge of the column header to make it wider, or double-click the divider for Excel to autofit the column to the data. You can resize multiple columns at once by highlighting them first, then dragging any of their borders.

Printing setup is also important. Use Print Preview to see how your spreadsheet will look on paper. Small spreadsheets are often better printed in landscape orientation, which you can set under Page Setup. If your data is too small, you can scale it up or down using options in the Page Setup window. You can adjust the margins to better center the worksheet on the page and use the "Center on page horizontally and vertically" settings for a more polished printout.

Customize your headers and footers to include information like the class name, page numbers (for example, "Page 1 of 3"), the current date and time, or the filename. These features make it easier to organize printed spreadsheets and keep track of your work.

For simple sorting, highlight the data you wish to sort, then use the Sort Ascending or Sort Descending buttons. Always make sure you include both the names and their corresponding grades before sorting; otherwise, you might scramble the data. You can sort by different columns, like the average score, by highlighting the relevant range and ensuring the column you want to sort by is active. For more complex sorting—such as sorting by average and then by final grade—you can use the Sort dialog under the Data menu to specify up to three columns for sorting.

To calculate each student's average, use the AVERAGE function. After typing the formula for the first student, use the autofill handle to copy it down the column for all students.

During printing, if you want your spreadsheet centered or formatted a certain way, the Page Setup dialog gives you control over layout and appearance. Remember to save your work frequently to avoid losing any changes.

We'll pause here, since the next major topic is charting, which is a more substantial subject. We'll pick up charting in the next class.

Upcoming lessons will include working with formulas such as IF statements to determine pass/fail status based on averages, as well as more advanced charting and lookup tables. Those features will help you get the most out of Excel as you progress beyond the basics.

If you have questions, I'll be available in the chat room for a few extra minutes after class. You can also reach me by email at [email protected] for any follow-up.

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

Topic List

Opening and navigating Microsoft Excel
Identifying parts of the Excel interface
Explaining workbooks and worksheets
Using the menu bar and toolbars
Entering data into cells
Entering and editing column headers
Navigating cells using keyboard and mouse
Entering student names and test grades
Using Tab and Enter to move between cells
Using autofill to fill in series of data
Resizing and autofilling ranges of cells
Adding borders to cell ranges
Saving workbooks and managing files
Using the Save and Open commands
Organizing files into folders
Undoing actions with the Undo button
Using Increase Decimal and Decrease Decimal buttons
Formatting numeric data for consistent decimal places
Resizing columns and adjusting column widths
Auto-fitting column widths
Resizing multiple columns at once
Previewing spreadsheets with Print Preview
Switching between Portrait and Landscape orientation
Adjusting page scaling in Page Setup
Setting margins and centering spreadsheets on the page
Adding and customizing headers and footers
Inserting page numbers and file names in headers/footers
Printing gridlines and row/column headings
Sorting data using Sort buttons
Selecting ranges properly for sorting
Sorting by different columns
Sorting by multiple columns using the Data Sort dialog
Calculating averages using the AVERAGE function
Filling formulas down with autofill