Objectives:

1. Understand Excel Basics
2. Create and Edit an Excel Document
3. Make documents backwards compatible for use with older versions of Excel

Steps:

1. Introduction to Excel 2007

A. What is Excel?

Excel was developed in the 1980's as a simple electronic calculating spreadsheet. Today Excel is a high powered tool that helps you organize, analyze and evaluate data. Excel is commonly used for various tasks, such as:

• Creating budget reports and tracking financial transactions
• Creating charts or graphs
• Organizing data in lists
• and much more!

Excel documents consist of workbooks, and within those, worksheets. You can store hundreds of worksheets within a single workbook. The workbook is containg those sheets is what you save as a .xlsx file. Older versions of Excel save workbooks as .xls files, so if you need to send you workbook to someone with an older version of excel, make sure that it is in .xls format, which will be covered later in this documentation.

If you have used an older version of Excel, but are new to Excel 2007 you will find many changes in the look and feel of this new version, the following section will ...

B. Components of Excel

Below is a screenshot of Excel 2007

If you have used older versions of excel you will notice that there has been some major changes in this newest edition. Each section labled in the image below will be described in more detail in this section.

Title Bar

The title bar displays the name of the workbook you are currently viewing and the name of the program you are currently running, which should be "Microsoft Excel". In previous editions of Excel, this is where the File, Edit, View etc... menu bar was found. In Excel 2007 however, those options are stored in the "Office Button."

So, the common tasks of saving and opening files is now completed through the office button. Also exiting excel can be done through the office button.

The Ribbon

The ribbon is used to complete editing options that were previously part of a toolbar or within the edit, view etc. menu lists. The ribbon is broken up in to seven sections: Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review and View.

Name Box

The name box tells you what cell or cells are selected 

Formula Bar

The formula bar displays the data in a cell you are viewing or editing or any formula that is in that cell.

Worksheet Window

This is where you see the worksheet that is currently open. Each worksheet consists of vertical colums that are identified by letters and horizontal rows that are identifies by numbers. 

Status Bar

From the status bar, you can use the zoom slider to zoom in or zoom out of the current sheet. This will not affect the actual size of the excel document. 

Sheet Tabs

The sheet tabs allow you to switch between different sheets by clicking the corresponding tab. Additionally, you can double-click a sheet to rename it. 

Getting Help

To get help from within Excel, just push F1 on the keyboard or click the Jelp icon in the ribbon.

2. Using Excel

A. Opening a Worksheet

1. When you open Excel 2007, a blank workbook with three blank worksheets will be open for you to use
2. To open an existing file, you can use the quick access toolbar or click the office button and choose to open a file.
3. To create a new blank workbook, select new from the office button.

[INSERT OPEN SCREENSHOT]

B. Inserting and Deleting a Worksheet

1. You can quickly insert a new worksheet by clicking on the new worksheet tab pictured below.

[NEW WORKSHEET TAB]

1. You can also insert worksheets by right clicking a worksheet tab and choosing "insert".
2. To rename a worksheet tab, right click the tab and select "rename" or double-click the name of the tab.
3. To delete a tab right click the tab you want to delete and then click "delete".

[RIGHT CLICK MENU]

C. Inserting and Deleting Cells, Rows and Columns

1. To insert a row or column, select a row or column that you want to be after the row or column you will insert.

2. Right click that row or column and choose "insert". This will insert an entire row or column.

[RIGHT CLICKED]

3. To insert a cell, right click where you want to insert a cell and select "insert".

4. This menu will allow you to choose how to move the other cells in the column, you can move the cells below it down a row or the cells to the right can all be moved over to the right. Additionaly, you can also choose to just insert a new row or column for the selected row/column.

[INSERT MENU]

D. Editing Worksheet Data

You can cut, copy and paste cells by right clicking the cells that you want to cut or copy and selecting cut or copy.

 [RIGHT CLICKED]

Then right click where you want the cells to be pasted and select paste.

There are also several shortcuts that you can use to cut, copy, paste etc.

• CTRL+C to copy
• CTRL+V to paste
• CTRL+X to cut
• CTRL+Z to undo
• CTRL+Y to redo

Excel also has a "Auto Fill" feautre that will copy what you have in a cell, or increment it if it notices a pattern. Some examples of how this works are shown below.

[AUTO FILL EXAMPLE]

You can use this feature by moving your mouse to the bottom right corner of a cell until you see a black plus sign [BLACK PLUS] and then drag the plus sign down as far as you want to auto fill to go. 

3. Creating a Grade book

A. Introduction

Now that you know the basics to Excel 2007, this documentation will cover how to create a basic grade book. In the process we will cover basic formatting and excel funtions. To see a completed grade book, click here [LINK].

[image of completed gradebook] 

B. Inserting Data

Starting in the second row in column A, click the cell and type in the student's names in rows two through five. Just make up names for four students to keep it simple.
 
You will notice that the name are larger than Column A. If you double click the line between column A and B, it will automatically re-size column A to fit the longest name. 
 
Additionally, you can click and move the line between column A and B to adjust the width how you want.
 
 

Before adjusting width	After adjusting width

C. Formatting Cells

 First type in the name of the assignment, for example "Assignent 1", in the first row under column B.

 
Then, right-click the cell and select "Format Cells." Within the Format Cells dialog box, select the "Alignment" tab.
 If you do NOT see the "Alignment" tab in the format cells dialog box, you need to close the dialog box and click out of the cell and then click the cell ONCE to select the cell. If the cursor is blinking inside of the cell for text editing, you will not be able to properly format that cell.

This is the menu that comes up when you right-click a cell	This is the "Alignment" tab within the "Format Cells" dialog box.

Within the "Alignment" tab, under text alignment, change the horizontal and vertical alignment to "center." This will position your text to always be in the center of the cell.
 
Next change the Orientation to 90 degrees. You can do this by typing in "90" in the degrees box, or you can drag the red square in the orientation box to be vertical. This will align the text to be displayed vertically, as shown below. 
 

This is the settings that need to be changed within the "Alignment" tab of the "Format Cells" dialog box.	This is the result of changing the formatting options.

There are two ways to change the font settings. One way is by selecting the "Font" within the "Format Cells" dialog box. The other is by selecting the "Home" ribbon.

From the "Font" tab within the "Format Cells" dialog box, you can change the font, color, font style (bold, italic etc.) and size.

From the "Home" ribbon you can change Font, Size, Font style, color etc. within the area circled in the picture above.

Add assignments 2 and three and format them the same way as shown below.

D. Formatting Data

Next we want to give our students grades and so we know the total points availabe (to calculate grades) we need to add a Total row. This is shown below.

Next, we want to calculate the student's current grade. To do this, you will need to select the "Formulas" ribbon. Then Highlight the student's grade for the first three assignments and select the "AutoSum" button. This will insert the student's total grade in the following cell, as shown below.

Repeat that for each student and the "Total" row.
 
Next we will find each students grade percentage. To do this Click on the corresponding cell in the F column and type "=" and then click the student's total then type "/" then click the class total. This is shown below.
 

 
Continue this process for all students and the total. The result will be in decimal, so we need to format the cell to show percentage.
 
To format all the cells in the F column for percentages, select the "Home" Ribbon. Then press the "F" at the top of the F column to select the whole column. Lastly press the "%" button circled below to format the column for percent values.
 

Before formatting the column	After formatting the column

D. Adding a Header

Now that our gradebook is complete. We want to put a title or header for our work. There are two kinds of headers used within excel, if you are only viewing the spreadsheet on a computer, a new row at the top of the page will be the best type of header, however, if you plan to print your spreadsheet, you will want to use a print header that will be centered on the printed page. 

To add a header to your data by adding a new row, use the "Home" ribbon and select "Insert" and then "Insert Sheet Rows" as shown below. 
Next, select Column A through F in row 1 and slect the "Merge & Center" button as shown below. Once the cells have been merged, you can type in a new title.
 
If you are printing out the Excel document and want the header to be on the center of the printed page, you will need to use the "Insert" ribbon and select "Header & Footer".