Beginning Excel Tutorial Page 3 - Sample Worksheet
It’s time to make your first spreadsheet in beginning Excel. Let’s start with a one calculating how much you hypothetically might spend on office supplies. The first step is to title your worksheet.
To do this click in cell A1 so you can see your cell pointer. Type Office Supply Expenses. Then click on the bold and underline icons near the top of your screen. (In 2008 the cell will pop out at you as you type.
Merge and Center
Next we’re going to adjust the title so it’s centered above the data we’ll soon enter. First click in another cell, any cell except cell A1. Then click on A1 again. You need to do this to get out of editing mode.
Now, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and find your right arrow key. This key is probably located somewhere on the right-hand side of your keyboard. It looks like this: à
While holding down the Shift key, click the right arrow key several times until you reach cell E1.Cells B1 through E1 should now be selected and appears highlighted. However, notice cell A1 is not shaded. The first cell you click on will never be shaded.
Anyway, you can let go of the Shift key now.
This method is good to use when you want to select several contiguous cells at a time. A group of selected cells is called a range.
Another way to select several cells is to hold the mouse click down and drag across them. You can try this if you want. Click anywhere in your worksheet to clear the highlighting from the cells you just selected. Now, press your mouse click on cell A1 and drag across your worksheet to cell E1and let go. Be sure not to select any other cells in the process.
Finally, to center the title click on the black-and-white Merge and Center icon. You can find it in the following location:
2003, 2004, and 2008 - In the middle of the Formatting Toolbar, to the left of the $. In 2003 the icon has a small “a” in the center, while in 2004 it has a capital “A” in the center.
2007- Click on the Home tab in the upper left-hand side of your screen. As in the other versions, the Merge and Center icon is to the left of the “$” in the Alignment group.
By the way, the Home tab and all the other tabs in 2007 make up the ribbon. The ribbon replaces the toolbars found in earlier versions of the Word® word processing software.
Once you click on the Merge and Center icon the Office Supply Expenses title should be centered across the cells
