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Microsoft Excel (MS Excel or Excel) is one of the most used spreadsheet program or
application. A spreadsheet application is a program that helps you arrange data in rows
and columns (that is, a 2D (dimension) grid or table). The row and column intersect in a
cell which contains text, numbers, images and even formulas. Using the spreadsheet, you
are able to draw charts and diagrams from the data you entered.
[Another definition: A spreadsheet is a calculating tool that prepares a document, called a
worksheet, whose data is arranged in rows and columns.]
Excel can be used to store and analyze financial data, ledgers and scientific data (see
Weblabs on the Faculty's intranet website:http://fot/weblab for tutorial that employs
Excel to analyze microdevice I-V data ). Excel also has many mathematical and logical
functions and constructs that can be used in formulas on the data.
Getting to Excel
Excel is part of the Microsoft Office Suite which has other applications such Power Point,
Access, Front Page, Word.
You can start Excel in several ways:
1. Start-->Run and then type the command excel and that should bring up the
spreadsheet program.
2. Alternatively, you can use: Start-->Programs-->Microsoft Excel. This is the
MS Excel program's icon:
3. Double-clicking any Excel document with the icon:
application with that particular document as default.
Besides the usual window components (close box, title bar, scroll bars, etc.) that we have
also found in MS Word, Notepad and other Windows applications, an Excel window has
several unique elements identified in the fig 1 below.
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Standard Toolbar
The Standard toolbar, located beneath the menu bar, has buttons for commonly performed
tasks like adding a column of numbers, printing, sorting, and other operations. Excel let's
you customize the toolbar or even display multiple toolbars at the same time.
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Entire row
**To activate the contents of a cell, double-click on the cell or click once and press F2.
Moving and Copying Cells
Moving Cells
To cut cell contents that will be moved to another cell select Edit|Cut from
the menu bar or click the Cut button on the standard toolbar.
Copying Cells
To copy the cell contents, select Edit|Copy from the menu bar or click the
Copy button on the standard toolbar.
Pasting Cut and Copied Cells
Highlight the cell you want to paste the cut or copied content into and select
Edit|Paste from the menu bar or click the Paste button on the standard
toolbar.
Drag and Drop
If you are moving the cell contents only a short distance, the drag-and-drop
method may be easier. Simply drag the highlighted border of the selected cell
to the destination cell with the mouse.
Navigating the worksheet with keys
Movement
Key stroke
One cell up
up arrow key
CTRL+HOME
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