Excel Basics

You'll learn a bit here about how to work with Microsoft's Excel software (or the equivalent).
This is useful if you ever have a need to produce spreadsheets for classes or other work.

On your desktop, you should see an icon labelled "Excel"--click on that icon. (there may be
other ways to get here as well, such as going to the start menu, going to "programs",  "microsoft
office", etc.)

You get a blank spreadsheet.  Columns are referenced by letters, rows by numbers.  So we can go to
cell A1 and type in your name--this may cause the name to spread across to the next column--that's
fine.  Now with the cursor over the cell, (the cell should have a heavy black outline around it), right-click
your mouse.  A menu pops up.  You can copy, cut, etc, but now click on "format cells".  This brings up
another menu.  With this menu--try it out--you can change the font style, the font size, do things such as
blod or italic, change the border color, and also color the cell or cells themselves.  You can also do things
such as superscripting and subscripting.  The top Excel menu has a "format" button--this menu lets you
format rows, columns, etc.

Now, move the mouse cursor up to the row of letters--A, B, C, etc.  If you position the cursor carefully
on the border between, say, the E column box and the F column box, the cursor changes shape--it now
has small right-and-left arrows.  If you hold down the left mouse button you can drag the boundary to
the right or left--this lets you make any column you want wider or narrower.  You can do the same thing
with rows--you can make rows wider or thinner.  You can also use the "insert" button at the top menu
to add new rows or columns, and you can even add hyperlinks.  With the "edit" menu you can copy,
delete, etc. 

Let's go to cell F8.  In this cell type 15.7.  With the cell containing 15.7 highlighted (black box around it)
click on "format" on the top menu.  Then click on "cells".  Click on "alignment" and then go to the
"text alignment" area and look at the box under "horizontal".  There's a menu here.  You can use this
to left-justify the cell contents, right-justify, center, etc.  "vertical" lets you position the contents
vertically in the box.  You can also go to "orientation", which looks like the right half of a clock face.
See what this does--you can orient the slant of the cell contents here.  Now, instead of the "alignment" button, click on the "number" button.  This gives you lots of options for how numbers in cells appear.
You can specify the number of decimal places, all sorts of things--try a few to see what happens.  The
"font" button lets you pick a type font, font size, bold, italic, etc.  "border" gives you options for what
you want the border of the cell to look like, and "patterns" lets you pick colors for the cells.

Now, let's go to an unused area--say cells along row 12.  In A12, type 15.3, and in B12 type 2.9.  Now, in
cell D12 (or C12, if you want) type (without the quotes) "=A12+B12" and hit return.  Watch what
happens in this box.  You get the sum of what is currently in cell A12 and what is currently in B12.
"currently" means just that.  Now go back to cell A12, click and hit backspace--this deletes the old value.
Type in 3.4 and hit return.  You'll note that not only has cell A12 changed--which you did explicitly, but
the contents of cell D12 has changed as well--remember--it hold the sum of what is currently in cells A12
and B12.  If you had values in cells A12, B12, C12, D12, and E12 and you wanted the total in cell F12, you could have in F12  "=A12+B12+C12+D12+E12".  Another option would have been to type into
cell F12 "=sum(a12:e12)" [note that A12 and a12 both are OK here].  This tells Excel to add up all
cells from a12 to e12.  If you want to wok down a column, =sum(d1:d5) says add values in column d.
+, -, *, /  work here:   =(a12+b12)*(c12-d12) is fine.  You can mix-and-match anywhere--for example,
=a12+d17 -d8*e3.