hints & tips - excel 2010

8/12/2019 Hints & Tips - Excel 2010

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MICROSOFT EXCEL 2010 HINTS & TIPS

Quick Access Toolbar

Status Bar

File TabTitle Bar Minimise | Restore Down | Close Buttons

Ribbon

Help

Groups

Vertical

Scroll Bar

Zoom

Slider

HorizontalScroll Bar

View

Buttons

Worksheet

Tabs

Rows

Columns

Active Cell

(currently A1)

Insert

Worksheet

Worksheet

Navigation

Buttons

Expand

Formula

Bar

Formula

Bar

Select AllButton

Tabs


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FILE TAB

The File Tabreplaces the Office Buttonor File menufrom previous versions of Excel and allows you to

access commonly used file management commands such as:

QUICK

ACCESS

TOOLBAR

The Quick Access Toolbarallows easy access to a number of commands

including the ones displayed here (from left to right): Save; Undo; Redo;

New;Open and Quick Print. NBThis toolbar can be customised via the

arrow button at the far right hand side of the toolbar.

RIBBON

The Ribbonreplaces drop-down menus and toolbars from previous versions of Word. It

consists of 3 elements: Tabs; Groupsand Commands. Whenever you select a tab you

will see that the ribbon will change to show groups and commands which are relevant to

the sphere of activity covered by that tab. The ribbon allows easy and more visible

access to groups of related commands which were previously buried in various menus,

toolbars and/or task panes. NBYou can minimise the ribbon by clicking on the arrow

just to the left of the help icon on the top right hand side of the screen.

TABS

Not including the Filetab there are 7 permanent tabs: Home; Insert; Page Layout;Formulas; Data; Reviewand View. Each of these tabs control a particular sphere of activity (e.g.

data can be imported,sorted, filtered etc. using the Datatab). In addition to these basic tabs there are other on-demandtabs

which only appear whenever a specific element such as a table, a picture or a drawing object is selected or inserted. Notice that

these tabs are grouped according to the object, which has been selected, inserted or modified, using coloured tabs in the Title Bar.

GROUPS

Within each tab there are several Groupswhich show related clusters of commands as illustrated here

using the Numbergroup which includes the related commands of Number Format (e.g. General,

Number, Currency, Short/Long Date, Percentage, Textetc.); Accounting NumberFormat(clicking on

the arrow next to this icon allows you to choose between English (UK), English (US),Euroor more

accounting formats); Percent Style; Comma Styleand Increase/Decrease Decimal(to increase ordecrease the number of places after the decimal point). You can also click on the Dialog Box Launcher

(arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the group) to open the Format Cellsdialog boxwhere further related options can be

selected including text Alignment(including Orientation), Font, Borderand Fill.

NAME BOX

The Name Boxdisplays the cell reference of the active cell or the top left-hand cell of a range of

selected cells with the column label followed by the row label (e.g. A19 = column A, row 19).

Clicking on the arrow on the right-hand side of the Name Box allows you to enter the cell reference of a cell which will become the

active cell as soon as you press the Enterkey.


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FORMULA

BAR

The Formula Bar displays the formula used in a selected cell and

also allows you to manually enter a formula whose result you

want to display in the active cell. The Formulas Tabdisplays the

very wide range of possible formulas, which all begin with an equals sign(=), and use one or more operators (e.g. add(+), subtract(-

), multiply(*) and divide (/) are all arithmetic operators). Some commonly used formulas are displayed by clicking on t he arrow to

the right of the AutoSumcommand from where you can also click on the More Functionscommand to access the full range of

formulas. NBThe arrow to the right of the Formula Bar allows you to expand the Formula Bar for more complex formulas.

WORKSHEET

TABS

Worksheet Tabsallow you to view the various worksheets which

make up a particular workbook. NBBy default three worksheets

are created with every new workbook although extra worksheets can be created, if required, by clicking on the Insert Worksheet

command which appears at the end of the Worksheet Tabs. Also there are navigation buttons, to the left of the Worksheet Tabs,

which can be used if there are more tabs than can be displayed in the space available.

HOW TO DO LIST

Create a chart You can create a chart in Excel as follows:

enter the data, to be displayed in the chart, onto a worksheet;

select the cells which contain this data; click on theInserttab to display the Charts group; from the Chartsgroup click on the type of chart you want to create (e.g. Column, Line, Pie, Baretc.) to display the

various options available for this type of chart (NByou can view the full range of possible charts in the Insert Chart

dialog box which can be opened either by clicking on the arrow in the box right-hand corner of the Chartsgroup or by

clicking on the All Chart Typescommand which appears at the bottom of any of the chart type options whenever

you select a particular type of chart;

your chart should now be displayed along with three additional tabs, Design, Layoutand Format(grouped under ChartToolswhich now appears in the Title Bar)these tabs provide a wide range of options to change the appearance of

your chart and to allow you to add additional information (e.g. clicking on the Layouttab allows you to add/amend aChart Titleand Axis Titlesusing commands from the Labels group) NBsome commands are also available by right-

clicking on the chart but note that the menu options will change depending on where you right-click.

Using AutoSum AutoSumallows easy access to the most commonly used functions in Excel including:

Sum (default function): totals all selected values Average: gives average value from selected data

Count numbers: counts number of values selected Max/Min: identifies maximum/minimum value from selection

NB AutoSum is so popular that it appears on two tabs: Home(in Editinggroup) and Formulas(in Function Librarygroup). Also

when you select values on a worksheet the results for Average, Countand Sumare displayed automatically on the Status Bar.


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Resize columns / You may need to resize columns or rows in your worksheet to accommodate large numbers or longer pieces of text. There are

rows various ways that you can resize columns in Excel (rows can be resized in a similar way):

1. click and drag the right-hand boundary of the column heading (i.e. between column labels A, B, C etc.) to desired width;2. double-click the right-hand boundary of the column heading to auto fitthe column (i.e. automatically increase or

decrease the width of the column to accommodate the amount of data entered into that column);

3. with the active cell in the column you want to resize or with that column selected click on the Format command (in theCellsgroup of the Home tab), then click on Column Widthand then enter the desired width of the column measured

in the number of characters it should accommodate (0 min.255 max., default width is 8.43 characters).

NBYou can also apply any of the above to multiple columns by firstly selecting the columns to be resized by clicking and

dragging across the column headings (or you can select all columns in your worksheet by clicking on the Select Allbutton

- a grey triangle in a white box in the top left hand corner of the worksheet) and then following the above instructions.

You can also use the Wrap Textcommand to make text fit into a column as follows:

select the cell or cells you want to format click on the Wrap Textcommand in the Alignmentgroup of the Home tab.

Printing worksheets It can be problematic to print out worksheets as frequently they will not fit onto an A4 page using the default settings.

However there are several options available to you to make sure that your spreadsheets print out correctly:

1. You can quickly see if the worksheet will fit on a printed page by: changing from the default Normalview to Page Layoutview using either the View buttons, on the right-hand

side of the Status Bar, or by clicking on Page Layoutin the Workbook Viewsgroup of the View tab (NBnotice

that if you switch back to Normal view a dotted line to indicate automatic page breaks now appearsthis also

happens if you use Print Previewor Page BreakPreview);

in the Viewtab select Page BreakPreviewfrom the Workbook Viewsgroup to view and adjust where theautomatic page breaks will occur (dotted line = automatic page break; solid line = manual page break)NByou

can click and drag these page breaks and Excel will adjust the scaling of the worksheet to fit on a printed page.

2. You can also use the Printcommand (click on File Tab Print) to preview the worksheet before printing and, ifnecessary, click on Page Setupto open the Page Setupdialog box where you can:

change the Orientationfrom Portraitto Landscape(available from the Pagetab in the dialog box); shrink (or enlarge) worksheets to fit on a printed page by adjusting the Scalingusing the Adjust to % normal

size or Fit tooption (available from the Pagetab in the dialog box);

if available, choose a larger Paper sizeto print on to (e.g. A3) (available from the Pagetab in the dialog box); reduce the margins (available from the Marginstab in the dialog box) (NB you can also adjust margins using the

Marginscommand in the Page Setupgroup of the Page Layouttab).

NBYou can also open the Page Setupdialog box by clicking on the dialog box launcher in the right hand bottom corner of

the Page Setupgroup in the Page Layouttab.

hints & tips - excel 2010

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