Basic Excel: Developing Your First Spreadsheet

By Author: Chris Le Roy
Total Articles: 92
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Developing your first worksheet can be an exciting time but there are a few things you need to be aware of. When entering data into a cell, the data is normally going to be text, numbers or a formula. If you enter a text or numeric value into the cell, the value isn't going to change. These values are known as Constant Values.

If you enter a formula in a cell, the values in that cell may change. For example the formula may contain references to cell addresses and if you change the value in one of those cell addresses it will change the result because Excel will recalculate the value.

Entering Data

The golden rule in using Microsoft Excel is that before you enter a value into a cell you must make the cell active. Once you have done that, you can enter the data required.

Once you have completed entering the information into the cells you must tell Excel that you are happy with your entry. There are a few ways to achieve this:

1. Click on the Enter Button on the Formula Bar
2. Press the Enter Key
3. Click on another cell
4. Press an Arrow Key

One ...
... thing to note is that when you press the Enter key to complete the data entry, the cell below the cell you entered data in will be selected. This is the default way the Enter key works in Microsoft Excel however you can tell Excel to move to the left, right and up. To achieve this you select the Tools menu, then select the Options command and the Options dialogue box will be visible.

Select the Edit menu and change the value in the drop down box to the value you require. If you want to turn this feature off de-select the Move selection after Enter check box.

Entering Text

Entering text is a straightforward process, select the cell and then type the text. Now text is considered to be letters, numbers and any other characters that you can print using your printer.

There are a number of issues that must be understood when utilising Text in combination with numbers. If you type in text with a number eg 89 Albert Street or Target Budget 2004, Microsoft Excel will treat the data as text regardless. It should also be noted that some characters are treated as numbers such as the decimal place, comma and dollar sign.

You will find that as you enter text, the cells are not long enough to fit the data in. If there is no data in the cell next to it, then the text will flow over to the next cell. However if the cell isn't empty it will show you as much text as possible and then store the rest of the data.

There will be occasions when you want to have numbers treated as text such as phone numbers, mobile numbers, postcodes or part numbers. If you were to type in a Mobile Number such as 0417772544 into an Excel cell, Excel would drop the zero at the start of the number to treat the number as text. To over come this, you place a single quote at the start of the number. You will notice in the cell itself you don't see the single quote but in the formula bar's entry area you will see the single quote.