Microsoft Excel for Absolute Beginners

Microsoft Excel for Absolute Beginners

Duncan Williamson

excelmaster.co

February 2016

http://excelmaster.co/


© Devised and Prepared by Duncan Williamson February 2016 of 36

Introduction In 2012 I published a book called the Excel Project … which was a very detailed introduction to Excel Spreadsheeting for Accountants and Business People. This booklet is an updated version of chapter one of that book and it really does start at the very beginning of how to use and program a spreadsheet: all I assume is that you can start Excel! I have made corrections (there are only a few) to the original chapter and updated some of the materials. All of the screen shots here come from Excel 2013: I have yet to get my hands on a copy of Excel 2016. Who am I to offer such a booklet? I have been using spreadsheets professionally for over 30 years now and whilst I don’t know everything and can’t do everything, I believe I am good at explaining how to make a spreadsheet do what you want: in management accounting, financial accounting, personal and business finance, business, marketing, mathematics at a basic level, statistics at a basic level and more. I tell anyone who needs to know, too, that if I don’t know something, I always know a man who does and will find out for you! My background is management accounting and teaching and training in all of the areas I have just mentioned. I have listed major publications below and they contain even more insights that you will be able to appreciate having worked your way through this booklet. Note: worked you way through. Please do all of the examples and exercises here otherwise your learning will be passive and incomplete. The Booklet This booklet is relatively short but it covers many of the basic features of an Excel worksheet and workbook; but please be aware that there is even more that I could say about Excel in this introductory booklet. You need to immerse yourself in Excel and explore it for yourself. The best I can say is that I hope I can inspire you to explore as much and as often as possible. I have assumed that if you are reading this booklet then you need it! There are many examples and exercises here: please work through them all to give yourself the best chance of becoming an Excel Master in your own right. Publications Excel Solutions for Accountants Volume 1: here Excel Solutions for Accountants Volume 2: here Excel Solutions for Accountants Volume 3: here Finance for the Non Financial Manager: here Finance for the Non Financial Manager: exercises and solutions: here The Excel Project: excel for accountants, business people … from the beginning: www.amazon.co.uk

In Preparation

Beginner’s Guide to Probability: now’s your chance! Duncan Williamson [email protected]

http://bookboon.com/en/excel-solutions-for-accountants-book-1-ebook



http://bookboon.com/en/finance-for-the-non-financial-manager-ebook

http://bookboon.com/en/finance-for-the-non-financial-manager-exercises-ebook

http://www.amazon.co.uk/

mailto:[email protected]



Contents Microsoft Excel for Absolute Beginners ........................................................................................... 4

Pencil and Paper ....................................................................................................................... 4 Basic Functionality .................................................................................................................... 4 The Ribbon ............................................................................................................................... 4 Minimise the Ribbon .................................................................................................................. 6 The Quick Access Toolbar: the QAT ........................................................................................... 6 Basic Rules of a Spreadsheet ..................................................................................................... 8

Add Subtract Multiply Divide .................................................................................................. 8 More Complex Calculations .................................................................................................... 9 Built in Functions: SUM ... AVERAGE ... MIN ... MAX ................................................................ 9 SUM, AVERAGE, MIN and MAX. .............................................................................................. 9 IF Statements ..................................................................................................................... 10 Nested IF Statements .......................................................................................................... 11 Auto Fill .............................................................................................................................. 13 Auto Fill Menu ..................................................................................................................... 15

Moving Around your Workbook ................................................................................................ 15 Changing Column and Row Sizes ............................................................................................. 15 Moving a Column or Row ......................................................................................................... 17 Formatting Text ...................................................................................................................... 17 Cell Borders ............................................................................................................................ 18 How to find a new function ...................................................................................................... 19

Consolidation Exercise ......................................................................................................... 21 CONCATENATION ................................................................................................................... 23 Selecting non Contiguous Ranges ............................................................................................ 25

Why Select Non contiguous Ranges? .................................................................................... 26 Print Areas ............................................................................................................................. 26 The Camera Tool: Printing Non Contiguous Ranges ... and more ............................................... 27

Putting the Camera Tool in the Quick access Toolbar (QAT) .................................................. 27 Other Benefits of the Camera Tool ....................................................................................... 29

Transposing Data .................................................................................................................... 30 Cell and Range Addressing ...................................................................................................... 31 Range Names ......................................................................................................................... 33 Text box ................................................................................................................................. 34

Formatting a Text box ......................................................................................................... 34 Text box Styles ................................................................................................................... 35

CHAR() ................................................................................................................................... 35 Closing Remarks ..................................................................................................................... 36



Microsoft Excel for Absolute Beginners Pencil and Paper Here is the starting point for virtually any Excel spreadsheet: as many as 95% of all spreadsheets begin their lives with at least one fundamental error. One key reason why we all tend to make so many mistakes is that we are not prepared to spend time preparing our work properly. Your starting point for many of the examples in this book should be a writing pad and pencil. It really is a good habit to get into, especially with any spreadsheet file that has more than a dozen or so formulas, using a variety of functions and relationships. If you are preparing a spreadsheet for other people to use, you’d be silly not to plan the thing properly. Basic Functionality There are various basic rules that we need to appreciate as we build a spreadsheet file. We will look at each rule the first time we use it. This is what a brand new, blank Excel 2013 spreadsheet file looks like:

We will look at the various parts of the screen as we go along but for now, a spreadsheet is just a grid of what are called cells. Every cell has an address. In the screenshot of a blank spreadsheet file above, the cursor is currently in cell column A, row 1 which is therefore cell A1. There are 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns in an Excel 2013 worksheet. If you enter =1048576*16384 in cell A1 and press enter it will tell you how many cells are available in every worksheet! The answer to that calculation might look like this: 1.72E+10. Excel does that! It’s a scientist’s way of saying 17,179,869,184. Just make column A wider to see that number. If you still can’t see that number wait until we look at cell formatting and we’ll show you how to work with numbers like 1.72E+10. The Ribbon The ribbon is the name Microsoft gave to the organisation of menus and sub menus from Excel 2007 and onwards and there are eight separate ribbons or ribbon tabs to work with:



• Home • Insert • Page Layout • Formulas • Data • Review • View • Developer: this is not, however, installed by default and we will discuss how to install and use

it later Home:

Insert:

Page Layout:

Formulas:

Data:

Review:

View:



Developer: we will look at this tab later To get to and from each Tab you can either

• Single left mouse click on a tab itself or • Hover over the ribbon area and move your mouse wheel up or down and the Tabs will scroll

up and down for you. Minimise the Ribbon There are several ways of minimising the ribbon: the easiest way is to click the Ctrl and F1 (Ctrl+F1) keys together. Click them together again and it comes back. Double left mouse click on a tab title and that minimised the ribbon too: double click it to get it back. The Quick Access Toolbar: the QAT The QAT is the area of the ribbon that you really can create and change to your heart’s content. You can put in the QAT all of the menu items you want. This makes your version of Excel unique to you. You will find the QAT in the top left hand corner of the screen:

You can see here in our QAT and the best way to understand what is there is to use it/play with it:

• Save • Undo • Redo • Find and Select • New File (Ctrl+N) • Shapes • Print • Camera Tool • Form • Customise Quick Access Toolbar (that’s the down arrow to the right of the QAT)

If we click on the Customise arrows it shows us a number of options, including the ones we have already chosen:



Select anything you like; but the real power of the QAT comes when you click the More Commands entry. Try it! Go to any Excel work book or open a new one and Click customise QAT Click More Commands This is what you should see now, the customise the Quick Access Toolbar Dialogue Box:

What this means is that you can add anything you see here to your own personalised QAT: select the option you want, click the Add>> button in the centre of the dialogue box and either click OK or select some more. Look at the down arrow area at the top right of the dialogue box where you can choose to have your selections appear in all documents or just in the current one. Of course, you can also remove one or more entries from the QAT if you don’t like them or if you feel you have finished with them: select the entry to delete and click the Remove button that will then be highlighted for you. Similarly, there is even more to choose because the drop down arrow selection at the top left of the dialogue box allows you even more options.



You need to study these options carefully to appreciate the power of the QAT and how you can get the most out of it. Basic Rules of a Spreadsheet To begin with, the basic Excel spreadsheet rules are: To enter text in a cell, just type the text in the cell of your choice: put the cursor in the cell you want and start typing and press the Return or Enter key when you have finished. Alternatively, when you have finished typing your text, use your mouse to move the cursor away from the cell you are working with and click somewhere else on the worksheet. If you are starting to work with spreadsheets for the very first time, you must try these things for yourself. Open a new spreadsheet file by clicking on the Excel icon on your computer. Then try typing something in cell A1 of your new file. Play with your file: type and retype whatever you want until you are happy with what you are doing. It shouldn’t take you long! Add Subtract Multiply Divide In its very simplest sense, a spreadsheet program is really just a calculator. Let’s begin, then, by considering how the spreadsheet can help us with a variety of basic calculations. As with all calculators, Excel will help you with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. There’s just one thing you need to know in order to get started with calculations which is that every formula in Excel must begin with this character= the equals sign. Let’s not just talk about these things, let’s get started. Now type the following into cell A1 … overtype what was there already or open a new worksheet or file. To open a new worksheet click on the + you will see next to the worksheet tab name at the bottom …

=2+2 <Enter> ... of course it should say 4 once you’d pressed the Enter key In cell A2 type the following: =2-2 <Enter> ... did you get 0? In cell A3 type the following: =2*2 <Enter> ... did you get 4 again? Note: Excel uses the asterisk key for multiplying and not the letter x In cell A4 type the following: =2/2 <Enter> ... did you get 1? Note: Excel uses the backslash key for dividing rather than the ÷ sign Now in column B, enter these and see what happens: Cell Formula Answer Comment B1 =2+3*4 14 Make sure you know why the answer here is NOT 20 B2 =5/2/1 2.5



B3 =15-10+7 12 B4 =6/9 0.66667

More Complex Calculations Work through the following on your own now, starting in cell C1: create a single formula in each case to find the answers C1: Add 10 to 3 and multiply your result by 5 … the answer should be 65 C2: Divide 1,000 by 250 then add 25 divided by 5 to the result … the answer should be 9 C3: Add 50 to 175 to 104 and subtract 57 from the answer then subtract 103 from that answer … the answer should be 169 C4: Divide 1 by 3 and then multiply the answer by 30 … the answer should be10 Built in Functions: SUM ... AVERAGE ... MIN ... MAX Excel has a very long list of built in functions that save us all a lot of work. We will be exploring several of these built in functions in this booklet and here we are going to start with four of them: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN and MAX. Here is what you need to do first, set up a blank worksheet like this: A B C D E 1 24 2 52 3 13 4 12 5 28 6 Sum 7 Average 8 Minimum 9 Maximum

In cell A6 enter =sum(a1:a5) <Enter> to add together all of the numbers in the range A1 to A5 A7 enter =average(a1:a5) <Enter> to find the average of all of the numbers in the range A1 to A5 A8 enter =min(a1:a5) <Enter> to find the smallest of all of the numbers in the range A1 to A5 A9 enter =max(a1:a5) <Enter> to find the largest of all of the numbers in the range A1 to A5

• After you have finished, put your cursor back in cell A6 and you will see that Excel has automatically capitalised the word SUM and the range A1:A5... and AVERAGE(A1:A5) ... and MIN ... and MAX ... it ALWAYS does this and there is no need for you to type in capitals.

• Notice how Excel deals with ranges: rather than writing out A1 to A5 or from A1 to A5 or all

of the numbers in the range A1 to A5 inclusive, it just puts the first cell in the range and the last cell in the range and separates them with a colon ... A1:A5

Use the spreadsheet you have used in the previous example to find the sum, average, minimum and maximum of the values in the range C1:C5, as follows: A B C D E 1 24 103 2 52 67 3 13 55



4 12 93 5 28 67 6 Sum 7 Average 8 Minimum 9 Maximum

Your answers should be: Sum 385 =SUM(C1:C5) Average 77 Minimum 55 Maximum 103

IF Statements A spreadsheet is commonly treated only as a calculator by many people. There is nothing wrong with that necessarily as it can contain a massive amount of data and many relationships as it is prepared for those calculations. One major resource that has always been built into spreadsheets is the IF statement. This section takes you through the way to set up a spreadsheet with basic IF statements and highlights one or two ways in which an IF statement can be enhanced. An IF statement has the following basic structure =IF(x meets a condition, do A otherwise do b) More formally, that is: =IF(logical_test,value_if_true,value_if_false) For example, in cell B1 if cell A1 is equal to 10, write the word yes in this cell otherwise write no, again more formally: if the test is true, do something, otherwise do something else if the test is not true: B1: =IF(A1=10,”Yes”,”No”) Clear or open a worksheet and enter 10 in cell A1 and the above formula in cell B1 Change the value in cell A1 to 8 then 3 then 14 and see what happens in cell B1 We can use any operator in our IF statement: for example, enter the following variations of the above formula in the cells shown below and see what happens: B1: =IF(A1=10,”Yes”,”No”) ... IF A1 is equal to 10 B2: =IF(A1<10,”Yes”,”No”) ... IF A1 is less than 10 B3: =IF(A1>10,”Yes”,”No”) ... IF A1 is greater than 10 B4: =IF(A1<>10,”Yes”,”No”) ... IF A1 is not equal to 10 B5: =IF(A1<=10,”Yes”,”No”) ... IF A1 is less or equal to than 10 B6: =IF(A1>=10,”Yes”,”No”) ... IF A1 is greater or equal to 10 You should have this now and make sure you understand why you get these results: A B C D E 1 10 Yes 2 10 No 3 10 No 4 10 No 5 10 Yes 6 10 Yes

Create a work sheet that looks like this



A B C D E

1 IF and Nested IF Statements 2 3 Month Budget Actual Variance Comment 4 Jan 12,276 11,780 496 5 Feb 10,803 14,649 -3846 6 Mar 15,207 14,566 641 7 Apr 16,307 14,568 1739 8 May 10,209 12,074 -1865 9 Jun 10,088 10,088 0 10 Jul 11,826 14,620 -2794 11 Aug 11,509 10,994 515 12 Sep 11,634 12,147 -513 13 Oct 11,193 12,720 -1527 14 Nov 11,653 11,603 50 15 Dec 14,090 13,666 424

Program the Comment range, starting in cell E4, with an IF statement that says Favourable if the variance in column D is positive and Adverse if the variance in column D is negative. You might be a quality controller or a teacher or a student or someone who needs to set and manage thresholds. Program the following work sheet and program an IF statement in the P/F Column to record Pass against any value in the Results Column that is greater than or equal to 55% and Fail to anything less than 55%. Your answer should look like this: Results P/F

47% Fail 56% Pass 88% Pass 57% Pass 92% Pass 83% Pass 67% Pass 36% Fail 86% Pass

100% Pass Nested IF Statements A nested IF statement is one in which an IF statement can have other IF statements built into it, like this: =IF(A1>0,”Favourable”,IF(A1<0,”Adverse”,””)) You can nest your IF statements up to 64 levels deep. Here is the screenshot of our variance example from above with the original IF statement still included (column E) and the new nested IF statement (column F) ... make sure you can see the benefit of the new IF statement by concentrating on the results in June:



A B C D E 1 IF and Nested IF Statements 2 3 Month Budget Actual Variance Comment Comment Nested

IF 4 Jan 12,276 11,780 496 =IF(D4>=0,"Favoura

ble","Adverse") =IF(D4>0,"Favourable",IF(D4<0,"Adve

rse","-")) 5 Feb 10,803 14,649 -3846 Adverse Adverse 6 Mar 15,207 14,566 641 Favourable Favourable 7 Apr 16,307 14,568 1739 Favourable Favourable 8 May 10,209 12,074 -1865 Adverse Adverse 9 Jun 10,088 10,088 0 Favourable - 10 Jul 11,826 14,620 -2794 Adverse Adverse 11 Aug 11,509 10,994 515 Favourable Favourable 12 Sep 11,634 12,147 -513 Adverse Adverse 13 Oct 11,193 12,720 -1527 Adverse Adverse 14 Nov 11,653 11,603 50 Favourable Favourable 15 Dec 14,090 13,666 424 Favourable Favourable

With the original IF statement, all I said was, if a number is positive it is Favourable otherwise it is Adverse. I did not allow for a zero value and Excel quite rightly said that according to our IF statement, a zero value is something other than favourable so it must be Adverse. Our nested IF statement, though, says this:

• IF the variance is greater than zero it is Favourable otherwise • IF the variance is less than zero it is Adverse otherwise • IF the variance is equal to zero, enter a hyphen in the cell ... that’s what “-” means.

Amend the Pass/Fail example to reflect a revised rule:

• A Pass is a mark greater than or equal to 55% • A Fail is greater than or equal to 35% but less than 55% • A Bad Fail is less than 35%

Your P/F Column should look like this now: Results P/F P/F

71% Pass Pass 60% Pass Pass 49% Fail Fail 46% Fail Fail 34% Fail Bad Fail 63% Pass Pass 64% Pass Pass 58% Pass Pass 92% Pass Pass 60% Pass Pass

In this revised table, the third column, nested IF, is programmed as follows, in row one which is cell I19 in the spreadsheet file: =IF(G19>=0.55,"Pass",IF(G19>=0.35,"Fail","Bad Fail"))



Auto Fill Another labour saving device from Excel is the Auto Fill function. Try this: Open a new workbook and enter the numbers 1, 2, 3 in the range A1:A3. Now select the range A1:A3 by clicking on cell A1 and with the left mouse button pressed, drag down to cell A3. The selected range A1:A3 should be highlighted in a blue/grey colour. If you’ve never selected a range before, you might need to practise a bit until you get it right. Now the clever part! Put your cursor over little dot you can see at the extreme bottom right hand corner of the range. When you have done that your cursor will change to a + sign (this is the auto fill handle). When you have got the + sign, keep the mouse still, press the left mouse button and drag down until, say, cell A10. What do you find? This is the result you should have got:

A A 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 becomes 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10

In the range B1:B3 enter Jan, Feb, Mar and fill down to B12 ... what do you get? In the range C1:C3 enter 10, 20, 30 and fill down to C10 ... what do you get? This is what you should now have in your worksheet:

A B C 1 1 Jan 10 2 2 Feb 20 3 3 Mar 30 4 4 Apr 40 5 5 May 50 6 6 Jun 60 7 7 Jul 70 8 8 Aug 80 9 9 Sep 90 10 10 Oct 100 11 Nov 12 Dec

Use fill down for any series you like and Excel will give you an answer: please note, you need to use this with caution as some of the answers Excel gives might not be what you are expecting and you need to think about the answers carefully. What I mean is, Excel assumes your values come from a linear (straight line) data set and if they don’t, well, your fill down answers might be rubbish! Fill down the values you see in the ranges D1:D3 and E1:E3 and comment on your results!



A B C D E 1 1 Jan 10 105 37 2 2 Feb 20 110 29 3 3 Mar 30 115 33 4 4 Apr 40 5 5 May 50 6 6 Jun 60 7 7 Jul 70 8 8 Aug 80 9 9 Sep 90 10 10 Oct 100 11 Nov 12 Dec

You probably got this:

A B C D E 1 1 Jan 10 105 37 2 2 Feb 20 110 29 3 3 Mar 30 115 33 4 4 Apr 40 120 29 5 5 May 50 125 27 6 6 Jun 60 130 25 7 7 Jul 70 135 23 8 8 Aug 80 140 21 9 9 Sep 90 145 19 10 10 Oct 100 150 17 11 Nov 12 Dec

The answers in the range D4:D10 are fine but you will find that the answers in the range E4:E10 are wrong when I tell you that the numbers 27, 29, 33 came from this function: E1 =25+2Â1 E2 =25+2Â2 E3 =25+2Â3 Where ^ means raise to the power of ... 2^2 means 2*2 or 22 2^3 means 2*2*2 or 23 6^4 means 6*6*6*6 of 64 And so on Enter =25+2Â1 in cell F1, fill down to F10 and compare your answers with what you’ve got in the range E1:E10!

A B C D E F 1 1 Jan 10 105 37 27 2 2 Feb 20 110 29 29 3 3 Mar 30 115 33 33 4 4 Apr 40 120 29 41 5 5 May 50 125 27 57 6 6 Jun 60 130 25 89 7 7 Jul 70 135 23 153 8 8 Aug 80 140 21 281



9 9 Sep 90 145 19 537 10 10 Oct 100 150 17 1049 11 Nov 12 Dec

Quite a difference between columns E and F! Auto Fill Menu You can create your own auto complete lists like the ones we have just been discussing.

• Click on File (top let hand corner) • Click Advanced in the left hand menu • Scroll down towards the bottom where it says General • At the bottom of that section it says • Edit Custom Lists … Click on it …and it opens a dialogue box that shows you how to create

your list

Moving Around your Workbook The aim of this section is to encourage you to use keyboard keys, rather than your mouse ... that must be a good thing if you want to prevent or minimise repetitive strain injury. The following examples will not only save your hands and fingers, but they will make you much more efficient. Open any workbook you like and go to, say, cell AA99 (press the F5 key and use that Go To dialogue box to get you there!) Now, go to cell A1 ... press these two keys together ... <Ctrl>+<Home> Go to or stay in cell A1 and now press <Ctrl>+<End> ... where are you now? You should be in the bottom right most active cell in your worksheet ... the most extreme cell from home that you have used so far. <Ctrl>+<Down Arrow> ... you will either be at the bottom of a list or in cell A1048576 if column A is empty. What this combination does is to take you from your current position to the next empty row moving down from top to bottom ... it might not be the end of the column if your column has row breaks in it. If the column is continuously populated you will get to the bottom immediately by using this keyboard combination. Go to or stay in cell A1048576 and now press <Ctrl>+<Up Arrow> ... you will either be at the bottom of any list there is in column A or at the top of it or the first section ... From anywhere in your worksheet press <Ctrl>+<PdDn> ... where are you now? If there is one, you should be in the next worksheet to the right of the one you started in. Otherwise you stay where you are! <Ctrl>+<PgUp> ... where are you now? If there is one, you should be in the next worksheet to the left of the one you started. Otherwise you stay where you are. It is well worth your while getting used to these keyboard shortcuts as they will save you time and pain. There are hundreds more keyboard shortcuts to learn. Changing Column and Row Sizes



When you are setting up a spreadsheet file for the first time, you will be typing in column headings, row headings, values and all sorts of things. Of course, some words or titles will be short and some will be long. Some values will be small and some will be large. If you don’t know how to deal with the formatting of such things, your work might not only not look good, it might really be unreadable. Copy the following to cell A1 in a blank workbook: Date Account Details Destination/Other

Classification 04 September 2016 Internet Connection Al Salam Rotana Hotel

Khartoum Khartoum

05 September 2016 Food HMSHost Schiphol Airport Amsterdam

Khartoum

5 September 2016 Taxi Fare Home to Manchester Airport

Khartoum

07 September 2016 Book Business Book Book 15 September 2016 Book This isn't Excel it's

magic Book

15 September 2016 Book Toyota Culture: the heart and soul of the Toyota way

Book

16 September 2016 Book From amazon, title forgotten

Book

18 September 2016 Postage Special Delivery Letter Visa When I did that just now, this is what I got:

See, a bit of a mess: the ####### characters tell you that the column is not wide enough to display the values in that cell and the other text was wrapped around their cells. What do we do then to overcome this problem? The answer is to let Excel do everything for us ... almost! Go to your new worksheet and left click on the column heading A, keep the left mouse button clicked and drag the cursor to the right until you have selected all of ccolumns A to D. Now carefully move the cursor over the column headings until you get to the point where two columns meet: A and B or B and C ... or even D and E. You should notice that the cursor changes from being a down arrow to a two way arrow.



When you have got your two way arrow, keep the cursor still and quickly double click the left mouse button ... you might need to practise this. Select the columns again and try again ... you might have to make changes on a column by column basis if Excel doesn’t do what you want. You might have to format rows as well, using the same technique. When you get it right, this is the result:

Excel has automatically expanded each column to the width of the largest content in each column. You should do this whenever some text spills over from one column to another. Moving a Column or Row Imagine that we realise that entire contents of the column headed Destination/Other Classification should really be column B not column D, what can we do? Do this: Click on the heading of column D so that the entire column is selected and then move the cursor either to the right or the left boundary of column D and when the cursor changes from its default to a four way arrow , keep the cursor still, click the left mouse button and drag column D to its new place between the existing columns A and B ... try it! Again, practise until you can do it but this action moves the entire column: lock, stock and barrel! Move rows in the same way and we can move one column or row at a time or two or more columns or rows at a time. Formatting Text Sticking with the example from the previous section, imagine we want to format the table of data in a simple way. For example, we just want to make column headings bold ... select the text and either Press these two keys together <Ctrl>+<B> Or click on the B icon in the Font section of the Home Tab:

You can see how to make the content of the range A2:A9 Italicised can’t you? <Ctrl>+<I> Or click on the I icon in the Font section of the Home Tab ... next to the Bold icon above. And underlining any text? <Ctrl>+<U> Or click on the U icon in the Font section of the Home Tab ... next to the Italics icon above.



Cell Borders In some cases you might want to put borders around some or all cells in your worksheet. Use the Borders icon to make your current worksheet look like this:

To put borders round a cell or a range, this is the icon you need to use, also found in the Font section of the Home tab. Just select the cell or cells you would like to put a border round and use this icon by clicking on the drop down arrow on the right of that icon:

There are many options for borders and variations of them. Here is the icon expanded in full:

It’s best if you experiment with the options that are available to you and here are just a few of the things you can do with the borders and your tables: these are just a few examples to consider and you will also see that there several other ways to do this and to add colours and shading too.



How to find a new function So far we have looked at just a few of Excel’s in built functions: SUM, AVERAGE and so on. However, there are hundreds more functions built into Excel. How can we find whether a function is already available even if we don’t know it exists? Like this: To the left of the formula bar, which is where Excel puts your typing, formulas and so on, there is the symbol fx, meaning insert function: it’s also really a function finder! Click on the insert function icon and it gives you this dialogue box:

This dialogue box can tell you directly which functions are available by type of function:

• Financial • Date and time • Statistical • And more

Find out which categories are available by clicking the down arrow next to where it says Or select a category.



Alternatively, if you are not sure if there is a built in function but you know what you want to do, enter a word or phrase into the section underneath where it says Search for a function. For example, test it out by typing in such words as:

• Add • Mean • Standard deviation

And then click the Go button. Excel will then either give you exactly what you want or what it thinks are the best alternatives from what it thinks you have asked for. In the case of the three examples above, Excel will probably give you: Expression Entered Excel’s Suggestion Add DSUM, SUM, SUMIF, RTD, SUMIFS Mean A long list that includes AVERAGE, the arithmetic mean Standard Deviation Another long list that includes STDEV, standard deviation, the one that

we want When you click OK in that dialogue box, having found the function you want, Excel then opens another dialogue box that allows you to enter the data you want to enter and it will then enter the result in the current cell you have selected. In the case of Add, we will use the SUM function:

This dialogue box describes the function and will show you the results to date as you add more and more data. As you enter your data, the number of numbers it will allow you to enter will grow. Try it ... and get used to how it works and what it does for you. Alternatively, if you want more information before you start to use the function, you can see the option to use Excel’s Help files where it says Help on this function in the bottom left hand corner of the dialogue box. Let’s test this out: open a blank workbook and keep your cursor in cell A1. Click on the Insert Function icon and search for sum, click Go and then OK. Now enter the following data into the dialogue box number by number: 30, 63, 49, 38, 57, 73, 19, 53, 42 Click OK now and in cell A1 you should see the total of those 9 numbers is 424 and inside cell A1, Excel has automatically built the function =SUM(30,63,49,38,57,73,19,53,42) for you. Do it again but for the standard deviation this time (what’s the standard deviation? Well, you can read about it as you carry out this exercise, in the Help file ... it’s a very useful statistical function). Use the same 9 numbers as before and this time put your cursor into cell A2 to start with. Format your answer to two decimal places and your answer should be:



16.77 and in cell A2 you should see that Excel has automatically generated this for you: =STDEV(30,63,49,38,57,73,19,53,42) Consolidation Exercise This consolidation exercise will help you to work through many of the things that we have done so far. Create a new Excel workbook which you should open alongside these instructions.

• Copy the following table or type the contents of the following table into the spreadsheet. Make sure that you begin by typing the column heading Month into cell A1 and then complete the table with no column or row gaps.

Month Machine

hours Labour £

March 30 347 April 63 521 May 49 398 June 38 355 July 57 473 August 73 617 September 19 245 October 53 487 November 42 431

• If you copy and paste the table into the Excel file, use the Smart Tag Paste Option either

to keep the formatting as it is above or to change it to the destination formatting: the choice is yours.

• Resize columns A to C to make the headings fit properly.

In cell A11 enter Total In cell A12 enter Average In cell A13 enter Count In cell A15 enter Minimum In cell A16 enter Maximum In cell A14 enter Range In cell A17 enter Standard Deviation In the ranges B11:B17 and C11:C17 enter the appropriate function to find the values suggested by the row headings in column B and C, rows 11 to 17. Hint: fill the range B11:B17 with the functions and then copy right to copy them into C11:C17. We haven’t covered all of these functions yet ... time to do a bit of research by using the knowledge you gained in the section How to find a new function?

• Format your answers to two decimal places and resize the columns again if necessary. • There is in built no function for Range ... build a formula to find it! • How else could you have found the average, arithmetic mean, apart from using Excel’s in

built AVERAGE function?

Don’t look at the following until you have done everything you should have done!



Note: Range = maximum – minimum You could have found the average in this way: SUM/COUNT

• Copy the row headings in rows A1:A10 and paste them into the range D21:D29, use the Paste Option smart tag to Match Destination Formatting.

• Copy the column heading and data from the range B1:B10 and paste them into the range E21:E29. Again, use the Paste Option smart tag to Match Destination Formatting.

• Make the column headings in the cells D21:E21 bold • Select the range D22:E29 and use the fill handle to auto fill the data down to row 44: you

should now have the range D22:E44 filled with months and data. Format the data in the range E22:E44 to two decimal place

• Use the F5 key or <Ctrl>+<Home>to go back to cell A1

Did you get this? Notice I changed the colour of my borders for an earlier exercise and that colour has stuck until I change it again.



CONCATENATION Have you ever come across the word concatenate before? I hadn’t either until I learned about it as a function in Excel. Concatenate is a big word with a simple meaning: it means to join together. In terms of a spreadsheet what it means is that we could have, for example, two names or numbers in two cells and by using the concatenate function, join them together. There are two ways of using concatenate: =CONCATENATE("duncan ","williamson") ="duncan"&" williamson" Copy and paste these two examples into separate cells in a worksheet and see what happens. How could you use concatenate in other ways? Well, if you want to join two or more things, concatenate. If you want to combine, say, a date with a title, concatenate. Here’s an example for you. In a blank worksheet enter this in the cells shown: A1: DW Ltd Income Statement for the year ended A2: 31st December 2016 A3: =A1&” “&A2 ... Note: you should retype these double inverted commas in Excel if you copy and paste what you see here and get a #NAME! error Take a look at the screenshot below, this really works!



Isn’t that so simple: by the way, I never use =CONCATENATE(...) because & is so simple and direct. But there is nothing wrong with it at all and in the next exercise I do demonstrate how to use it. Try it! Starting in cell B5 of your worksheet, type the following names exactly as you see here and then concatenate row by row in column D, as you see here:

Here at the two sets of answers you might choose from:

As a final example for now, you can join numbers together too: from what you see below, in cell E13 concatenate the numbers in cells E10, F11, G12 ... Leaving a one space gap between the numbers In cell F13 concatenate the numbers in cells E12, F11, G10 ... Leaving no gap between the numbers at all

You answers should be E9: 45 86 48 F9: 858624



See what happens when you multiply your concatenated answers by 2: In F13 type =E13*2 F14 type =E14*2 That’s useful to know isn’t it! Selecting non Contiguous Ranges Contiguous is another word, like concatenate, that most of us have never used until I started using spreadsheets. A contiguous range is simply a group of cells that are all joined together in one area. The range A1:D55 is a contiguous range of cells. We know how to select the cells in a simple range, such as the range of cells A1:D55. What you might want to know sometimes is how to select more than one range at a time when those ranges are NOT contiguous. The following screenshot shows three non-contiguous ranges that have been selected all at the same time:

One big clue that we have selected a range or ranges is that the selected cells turn grey as you can see. This is how to select those non contiguous ranges, A1:C8 and F6:J12 and C15:F24. 1 Start by selecting any of the three ranges as normal: put the cursor in one of the four corners of the range, click and hold the left mouse button and drag the cursor to select the rest of that range and let go of the left hand mouse button. 2 Now go to a corner of the second range you want to select and before you click the mouse button click and hold the <Ctrl> key, then left click the mouse button and drag the cursor to select the second of your ranges. Let go of the left mouse button and the <Ctrl> key now. 3 Repeat step 2 for the third range You can select as many non contiguous ranges as you wish at any one time. PLEASE be careful with your left click and <Ctrl> clicking because if you make a mess of them you may well have to start all over again. I am speaking from experience here: with my lack of coordination getting in the way at times!



Why Select Non contiguous Ranges? A fair question: why might you want to select two or more non contiguous ranges? Formatting them for one, printing them for another. Print Areas You might have a simple work sheet in which case you can just ask Excel to print it and all could be well. In the case of the above example, though, I have decided that, having highlighted the values I want to highlight, I want to print those values and only those values. Do this: Select the ranges as we have already discussed and then do this:

• Select the Page Layout tab • Click on the Print Area icon and • Click on Set print area

You should see that the selected ranges are now surrounded by a border. Let’s preview our selection now, before we print it out: 1 Office Button 2 Print Unless there is something inside your ranges, you might see nothing with the print preview: type something in a few cells to see the effect of selecting your work. I typed 1 in the four corner cells of each range to help with this. You will find each of the three ranges will be printed on its own page. Alternatively, click on the View Tab and click on Page Break view to see this:

The three ranges are highlighted with the rest of the sheet dimmed. You probably can’t see it here but the range A1:C8 has been designated as Page 1 F6:J12 has been designated as Page 2 C15:F24 has been designated as Page 3 How did Excel choose which area goes on which page? It didn’t. I did! The order in which we selected the ranges will tell Excel that this is the order in which we want to print them. If page order is important, think carefully about this.



You are free to print your three ranges now: 1 Office Button 2 Print Alternatively, simply press <Ctrl>+P and you will get the print dialogue box: make sure you choose the correct printer and other settings and there you go! I strongly recommend you work your way through the selection and printing routines because they can be a bit of a bother until you have got used to clicking <Ctrl> and the left mouse, then letting go, then clicking them again ... The Camera Tool: Printing Non Contiguous Ranges ... and more Imagine you have generated the work sheet that follows. The purpose of this work sheet is to demonstrate how we might print on one page, two or more ranges that would otherwise have to be printed on separate pages.

We want to print on one page the ranges

• A1:D5 and • H15:K19

Putting the Camera Tool in the Quick access Toolbar (QAT) Let’s assume that they cannot be printed on one page unless we use the camera tool and that the camera tool is not already in the QAT:

• Click the down arrow to the right of the QAT and click More Commands



Just follow the steps in the order suggested below and you will find the Camera Tool in your QAT

To use the Camera Tool

• Select the range you would like to capture with the camera • Click the camera tool in the QAT ... you will now see the cursor as a cross, + • Click on the worksheet where you would like your “picture” to appear • Click on the new picture and move it as necessary to align it

The picture normally develops with a border round it: right click it to remove that border. Set up a work sheet or open an existing work book and Put the camera tool into the QAT if it isn’t already there.



Copy and paste a range using the camera tool I did this by taking a picture of H15:K19 and developing it in cell E6. You can see that the grid lines align pretty well and it’s difficult to see that the photo is a photo!

Other Benefits of the Camera Tool OK, so what’s so good about the camera tool, apart from having a picture of the range H15:K19 in the range A7:D11 ready for printing?

• Go to the range H15:K19, or your own equivalent original range. Make some changes to what is in one or more cells or reformat the title or even change the title ... make any change you like.

• Go to the picture, in the range A1:D11 in our case, to see what it looks like now:

I made a couple of changes to the original range and the photo from the camera tool shows those changes too. Marvellous! Now print the range A1:H10



Transposing Data Another word for transpose is rotate: we all know rotate but we might be unfamiliar with transpose! In any case what transpose means in the context of an Excel spreadsheet is that we select a range and paste it somewhere else in such a way that rows become columns and columns become rows. Here is an example of data before and after being transposed. I used ranges 1 and 2 from the previous, camera tool, example. The data in columns A:D are before being transposed and the data in columns F:J are after being transposed. Can you see what has happened?

In the above example A2:D2 has now become G1:G4: from row to column Study the Before and After Tables carefully to ensure you can see what has happened. I use the transposition of data for a variety of reasons, including • Data can be easier to understand once they have been transposed in some cases • In some cases it is impossible to draw a chart properly unless the data are transposed Here’s how to transpose a table: Select the data and copy it (click on the copy icon on the Home Tab or select the data and click <Ctrl>+C Put your cursor in the cell on a sheet where you want to paste your transposed data (this will be the top left hand corner cell) and then click the down arrow on the Paste icon on the Home Tab and select the transpose icon from the list you should see:

There you are, as simple as that!



Try it! The Excel work sheet basics5.xlsx contains the previous example and starting in cell E16 is a table of data that you would like to transpose and paste in the blank range starting with cell E31 ... do it! Copy and paste or type the following table into Excel

Before Start End Days

24 Nov 2016 09 Dec 2016 15 20 Jun 2016 29 Jun 2016 9 09 Jun 2016 20 Jun 2016 11 08 Sep 2016 17 Sep 2016 9 25 Sep 2016 17 Oct 2016 22 04 Apr 2014 23 Apr 2014 19

14 Mar 2015 12 Apr 2015 29 21 Apr 2016 29 Apr 2016 8 11 Aug 2016 25 Aug 2016 14 13 Apr 2016 21 Apr 2016 8

27 May 2014 14 Jun 2014 18 18 Jun 2015 30 Jun 2015 12

Now transpose the table into a blank range anywhere you wish. You table should look like this:

Cell and Range Addressing We have used a variety of addresses in this booklet already, like these: A1 B1 C19:F45 We have also used Excel’s ability be able to drag and fill down and across a variety of things. Dragging and filling cell and range addresses needs to be looked at carefully because of the way Excel has been programmed to work. Try it! Open a new workbook and enter =A1 in cell A1 Now drag and fill cell A1 down to cell A10 What do you see in cell A2? And cell A3? And cells A4, A5 ... A10? Yes, A1 became A2 then A3 ... then A10 Now drag and fill cell A1 right to cell H1 and what do you find?



B1 contains B1 Cell C1 contains C1... Cell H1 contains H1 This is what Excel is supposed to do. Imagine, though, that cell B1 contains a number that you want to include in several calculations. For example, cell B1 contains 20%, a tax rate and you want to use that for a number of calculations. Look at the following screen shot:

In the range D4:D10 I have entered a series of taxable pay amounts for ten employees and in columns E and F we want to find the income tax and After Tax Pay for each employee respectively. In cell E4 I have entered the formula =D4*B1 In cell F4 I have entered the formula =D4+E4

• Select and drag down cells E4:F4 to row 10

Oops! What went wrong? What went wrong was that in cell E4 it says D4*B1 but in cell E5 it says D5*B2 and in cell E6 it says D6*B3 What we really want is: in cell E4 it says D4*B1 in cell E5 it says D5*B1 in cell E6 it says D6*B1 Hmm, boring! Imagine if there are 10,000 calculations to do? How will we cope? Don’t worry, Excel already knows how to solve this problem. We use the Dollar sign, $, to tell Excel when we should let Excel change B1 to B2 to B3 ... or to keep it as B1 ... In cell E4 we amend the formula to read in cell E4 it says D4*B$1 which we then drag down to cells E5:E10 so that in cell E5 it says D5*B$1 in cell E6 it says D6*B$1 You can drag down that formula to as many rows as you like and B$1 will stay as B$1. We can see that putting the $ sign in front of the letter or number part of a cell reference anchors that letter or number. Formally, we have moved from relative addressing where letter and/or



number can change when it is dragged to absolute addressing where the elements that are anchored with the $ sign means that it cannot change however far we drag it. Take it a stage further by yourself now: here are the possible combinations you might use for the absolute addressing of cells and ranges: B1 $B1 $B$1 B$1 In a blank work sheet create examples that will allow you to use these four variations. You will use absolute and relative addressing every day of your Excel life now! Range Names This is the final session in this booklet and it relates to something I use over and over again: range names. Up to now, I have defined ranges in this way: A1 and B8:D15 and BA101:ZF1000. As we have seen in the previous section, though, there are times when we want to use a cell or a range more than once and to that end we drag a cell or range reference and forget to turn it into an absolute address. We might not spot what we have done and eventually find that we have made a real mess of our work. A good example of the kind of situation we might come across where simply using notation like this A1:D15 can be improved upon includes something like this, an example we have already seen: Month Machine

hours Labour

£ March 30 347 April 63 521 May 49 398 June 38 355 July 57 473 August 73 617 September 19 245 October 53 487 November 42 431

When we used this example before we calculated these values: Total Average Count Minimum Maximum Range Standard Deviation When you worked with this example before you probably found it was a bit awkward to program the formulas, even though we used the same range, B2:B10, for the SUM as for the AVERAGE as for the COUNT ... for the machine hours and similarly for the Labour cost. Using a range name, now, though, we are going to increase our productivity by a very large amount. Open Excel and make sure the above table is pasted there, starting in cell A1



1 select the range B2:B10 then in the name box type the word machine and press <Enter> 2 select the range C2:C10 then in the name box type the word labour and press <Enter> You have now created two range names: machine and labour. Now, here comes the productivity saving: In B11 we can enter =SUM(machine) In C11 we can enter =SUM(labour) In B12 we can enter =AVERAGE(machine) In C12 we can enter =AVERAGE(labour) In B13 we can enter =COUNT(machine) In C13 we can enter =COUNT(labour) In B14 we can enter =MIN(machine) In C14 we can enter =MIN(labour) and so on and so on Complete the calculations in the range B11:C17 for Machine hours and Labour £ as appropriate. Wherever you are on that work sheet, you can use the range name machine instead of the range B2:B10 and you don’t need to remember whether it should be B2:B10 or $B2:$B10 or $B$2:$B$10 ... Using range names is not only a good idea, it is a productivity saving device and it saves your memory ... the bonus being that the chances of making mistakes with ranges is probably reduced by using range names. Text box If you are a Microsoft Word and/or PowerPoint user then you are probably familiar with the Text Box utility. Text boxes are also available to be used in Excel. We use text boxes to highlight features of a work book or work sheet; or to enter text and instructions in such a way that they don’t interfere with the workings of the work sheet. To create a text box:

• Click on the Insert Tab • Click the Text Icon and then Text Box • Click wherever on the work sheet you would like to place the text box and it is immediately

ready for you to enter something in it.

Open an existing work book or create a new work book and create a text box for one or more work sheets: enter into it, for example, your name, the name of the work book and a sentence telling the user what it’s for ... You might then have this:

Not very exciting though is it: it doesn’t stand out at all! Let’s format the text box. Formatting a Text box Firstly, select some text in the text box and make it bold and/or italic and/or underlined ... any font feature you like:



Try it! Make sure you can change the formatting of the text in your own text boxes. Text box Styles Excel, more than any previous version of Excel, has made available a large range of built in styles that we can use to enhance our text boxes:

• Click on a Text Box • Click on the Format Tab • Select Shape Styles and choose the format you would like to use

Here we are: the original, text box with some text formatting and an automatic style added

Notice that the text box has been reformatted along the lines of the style we chose and it has retained the changes we made earlier. If you think the style options provided by Excel are not enough, click on the more styles option to reveal even more options. In case you hadn’t noticed, you can move your text box about your work sheet, you can copy and paste it and you can resize it: add more text and resize the box to your heart’s content. CHAR() There are times when you might want to put a special character or symbol in a cell or a text box. You can use

• Click Insert Tab • Click Symbol • Select the symbol you want: they are sometimes difficult to find!

• Alternatively open a blank work book

• Change the font for that cell or check to make sure it’s the font you want (different fonts can

give different characters. For example, Wingdings only give pictures not numbers and letters) • In cell A1 of the work sheet you now see enter =CHAR(ROW()) • Fill down to row 255 • Print out your listing for ready reference and/or save the file for future use



Note that the first 32 characters are always NULL, that is blank or empty or having no value. Of course, you do not have to prepare these tables just to find the symbol you want. It might pay you to learn the ones that you use most and enter it directly into a cell or formula. For example =CHAR(163) = £ and the UK Pounds sign is not always available on all keyboards but it’s always available by using =CHAR(). As a third alternative, there is another character set you can access by

• Click the cell where you want to put a character • Click the <Alt> key and keep it pressed • Select any combination of numbers on the KEY PAD (NOT the numbers at the top of the

keyboard, they won’t work): from 1 to 255

If you want to know why there are apparently TWO sets of characters, do an internet search for ASCII and ANSI codes. Closing Remarks This is a really useful and comprehensive introduction to Excel spreadsheeting. Many of the main and basic functions and ideas are in here. If you have genuinely worked your way through this booklet, you will have learned a great deal and you will be able to do a great deal. Now, you are ready to take it many steps further: to do that go and get my Excel Solutions for Accountants books and get my Excel Project book. To get them, go to the web sites I mentioned at the start and search for me or the book title. None of my books is expensive but they are comprehensive and take you step by step through the topics. Finally, my blog is ever open http://excelmaster.co and it is free to read and free to join. See you there! Feel free to tell me if you have a particular Excel problem or if you think this booklet would benefit from another topic: I will happily consider adding it!

http://excelmaster.co/

Microsoft Excel for Absolute Beginners

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