Creating Your First Excel Worksheet

This section presents an introductory hands-on session with Excel. If you haven’t used Excel, you may want to follow along on your computer to get a feel for how this software works.

In this example, you create a simple monthly sales projection table along with a chart.

Getting started on your worksheet

Start Excel and make sure that you have an empty workbook displayed. To create a new, blank workbook, press Ctrl+N.

The sales projection will consist of two columns of information. Column A will contain the month names, and column B will store the projected sales numbers. You start by entering some descriptive titles into the worksheet. Here’s how to begin:

Filling in the month names

In this step, you enter the month names in column A.

1.	Move the cell pointer to A2 and type Jan (an abbreviation for January). At this point, you can enter the other month name abbreviations manually, but we’ll let Excel do some of the work by taking advantage of the AutoFill feature.
2.	Make sure that cell A2 is selected. Notice that the active cell is displayed with a heavy outline. At the bottom-right corner of the outline, you’ll see a small square known as the fill handle. Move your mouse pointer over the fill handle, click, and drag down until you’ve highlighted from A2 down to A13.
3.	Release the mouse button, and Excel will automatically fill in the month names.

Your worksheet should resemble the one shown in Figure 12-9.

Entering the sales data

Next, you provide the sales projection numbers in column B. Assume that January’s sales are projected to be $50,000, and that sales will increase by 3.5 percent in each of the subsequent months.

At this point, your worksheet should resemble the one shown in Figure 12-10. Keep in mind that, except for cell B2, the values in column B are calculated with formulas. To demonstrate, try changing the projected sales value for the initial month, January (in cell B2). You’ll find that the formulas recalculate and return different values. But these formulas all depend on the initial value in cell B2.

Formatting the numbers

The values in the worksheet are difficult to read because they aren’t formatted. In this step, you apply a number format to make the numbers easier to read and more consistent in appearance:

1.	Select the numbers by clicking cell B2 and dragging down to cell B13.
2.	Choose Home Number, click the drop-down Number Format control (it initially displays General), and select Currency from the list. The numbers now display with a currency symbol and two decimal places. Much better!

Making your worksheet look a bit fancier

At this point, you have a functional worksheet—but it could use some help in the appearance department. Converting this range to an “official” (and attractive) Excel table is a snap:

1.	Move to any cell within the range.
2.	Choose Insert Tables Table. Excel displays its Create Table dialog box to make sure that it guessed the range properly.
3.	Click OK to close the Create Table dialog box. Excel applies its default table formatting and also displays its Table Tools Design contextual tab. Your screen should look like Figure 12-11. Figure 12-11. Your worksheet, after converting the range to a table.
4.	If you don’t like the default table style, just select another one from the Table Tools Design Table Styles group. Notice that you can get a preview of different table styles by moving your mouse over the ribbon. When you find one you like, click it, and that style will be applied to your table.

Summing the values

The worksheet displays the monthly projected sales, but what about the total sales for the year? Because this range is a table, it’s simple:

1.	Activate any cell in the table.
2.	Choose Table Tools Design Table Style Options Totals Row. Excel automatically adds a new row to the bottom of your table, including a formula that calculates the total of the Projected Sales column.
3.	If you’d prefer to see a different summary formula (for example, average), click cell B14 and choose a different summary formula from the drop-down list.

Creating a chart

How about a chart that shows the projected sales for each month?

1.	Activate any cell in the table.
2.	Choose Insert Charts Column and then select one of the 2-D column chart types. Excel inserts the chart in the center of your screen.
3.	To move the chart to another location, click its border and drag it.
4.	To change the appearance and style of the chart, use the commands in the Chart Tools context tab.

Figure 12-12 shows the worksheet after creating the chart. Your chart may look different, depending on the chart layout or style you selected.

Printing your worksheet

Printing your worksheet is very easy (assuming that you have a printer attached and that it works properly).

1.	First, make sure that the chart isn’t selected. If a chart is selected, it will print on a page by itself. To deselect the chart, just press Esc or click any cell.
2.	To make use of Excel’s handy new page layout view, click the Page Layout View button on the right side of the status bar. Excel will then display the worksheet page by page (see Figure 12-13) so that you can easily see how your printed output will look. For example, you can tell immediately if the chart is too wide to fit on one page. If the chart is too wide, click and drag its lower-right corner to resize it. Figure 12-13. Viewing the worksheet in Page Layout mode. [View full size image]
3.	When you’re ready to print, choose Office Button Print Quick Print. The worksheet is printed using your default settings.

Saving your workbook

Until now, everything you’ve done has occurred in your computer’s memory. If the power should fail, all may be lost—unless Excel’s AutoRecover feature happened to kick in. It’s time to save your work to a file on your hard drive.

1.	Click the Save button on the Quick Access Toolbar. (This button looks like an old-fashioned floppy disk.) Because the workbook hasn’t been saved yet and still has its default name, Excel responds with the Save As dialog box.
2.	In the box labeled File Name, enter a name such as Monthly Sales Projection, and then click Save or press Enter. Excel saves the workbook as a file. The workbook remains open so that you can work with it some more.

If you’ve followed along, you may have realized that creating this workbook was not at all difficult. But, of course, you’ve barely scratched the surface. The remainder of this book will cover these tasks (and many, many more) in much greater detail.