Introduction to MS Excel – A Beginner’s Guide

Microsoft Excel has been around for decades and is one of the most desired skills if you are considering a career in data science or analysis. But there are still others who are starting to use it. Whether for work, school, or personal use, it can be a bit intimidating when you start out. In this blog, we cover the Introduction to MS Excel. Let’s get started with MS Excel, the most useful tool for crunching numbers and deriving information.

Content

• What is Microsoft Excel?
• How To Get Started With a New Excel Sheet?
• Add/Create/Delete Tabs
• Excel Ribbon
• Rows and Columns in Excel
• Quick Access Toolbar
• Saving the Sheet

What is Microsoft Excel?

MS Excel is a spreadsheet with a range of features and capabilities. Its applications in data analysis and information management are remarkable. MS Excel allows you to organize, edit and work on spreadsheets to obtain, analyze and transform data. You can add text, images, videos, objects, and many other elements to your spreadsheet to track, manage, and view information easily.

Excel is a Microsoft program with integrated spreadsheets that will allow us to carry out basic mathematical calculations up to much more complicated tasks. With Excel, we can work with multiple spreadsheets simultaneously.

How To Start Working With a New Excel Sheet?

Go to the Start menu of your system and search for Excel. 

After you have located the app, you can open it.

This is the 1st step towards creating your Excel sheet. This is what the black sheet looks like.

Add/Create/Delete Tabs

Once you open your new Excel sheet, you will see Sheet 1 mentioned on the lower left. You can perform different functions as mentioned below –

• Add a spreadsheet: Click the plus button at the bottom next to your last sheet.
• Rearrange worksheets: Hold the sheet tab and drag it to its new spot in the workbook.
• Name a spreadsheet: Double-click the sheet tab and type the new name. By default, you’ll see them named Sheet 1, Sheet 2, etc.
• Color a spreadsheet tab: Right-click on the sheet tab, and under Tab Color, just click to apply a new one.
• Protect a spreadsheet: Right-click the sheet tab and under Protect Sheet, add a password, and select your options.
• Move or copy a spreadsheet: Right-click the sheet tab and select Move or Copy. You can then move the sheet to another point in the workbook, move it to a different workbook, and make a copy for each case.
• Delete a spreadsheet: Right-click the sheet tab and click Delete. You will need to confirm this action in the next pop-up window.

Excel Ribbon

Now, let’s move on to a crucial element of the Excel worksheet: the ribbon. The ribbon is similar to that available with other Microsoft Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, etc. The ribbon holds the buttons that you will use inside the tabs. You can customize the ribbon to remove or add both tabs and buttons. But you will likely see the tabs below by default.

This ribbon has a series of menus and submenus that are located at the top of the main interface. These will give us access to most of the integrated functions of the program. The truth is that here we are going to have a good number of functions and features, so let’s see some of the primary aspects of the ribbon.

File: Create a new workbook, open an existing one, save, print, and share workbooks.

Home: Manage the clipboard, font, alignment, numbers, style, cells, and editing.

Insert: Insert tables, charts, pictures, links, etc.

Page Layout: Adjust the spreadsheet theme, page setup, scale to fit, and sheet options.

Formula: Choose a formula and a function from the library and perform the formula audit.

Data: Manage data, use data tools, analyze, group, ungroup, etc.

Review: Use tools for spelling, thesaurus, language, feedback, etc.

View: Change the workbook view, items to display, zoom in or out, and work with windows.

Rows and Columns in Excel

Excel has a structure of different spreadsheets which can be linked. Each spreadsheet works with columns and rows. A Cell establishes the relationship between rows and columns.

Rows: The rows within an Excel Sheet are arranged in a horizontal manner. They are sorted numerically from top to bottom and are on the right-hand side of the Excel sheet.

Columns: Excel columns give a vertical order to the data and are identified by Letters, they are located at the top of the Excel sheet.

Cells: Cells are the point of intersection between the Rows and the Columns. In the image below, you can see the marking of the cell as A2 in a rectangular box, which suggests the data is present in Column – A and Row – 2.

Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar is a customizable toolbar with a set of commands independent of the ribbon. It is located at the top left of the Excel window. And it’s important because it allows you to undo or redo an action and save your file quickly.

You can customize the Quick Access Toolbar and keep the options you want or use frequently.

Saving the Sheet

Go to File. This interface will appear. 

You can now save your sheet by the required filename at the desired location using the below - 

Save as – File name

Save as Type – Excel Workbook

Wrapping Up

So that was all about the introduction to MS Excel. Now that you understand how the face of your MS Excel sheet looks, you may want to move forward and learn how the sheet works. We will be coming up with stepwise tutorials on different functions of MS Excel and will walk you through different functions of MS Excel. Hope you find the article interesting. 

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