The first step in learning to do this is to understand Excel’s interface. Let’s take a look at a new document (Excel documents are usually referred to as “workbooks”):

Notice that the working area (called a worksheet) displays a grid of rows and columns that intersect to form boxes called “cells.” Each cell within the grid has a reference indicating its row and column location. For example, in the picture above, the cell A1 is selected (note the dark outline around the cell).

One thing to understand about this interface is that Excel will provide you with several different ways to accomplish the same thing (this is also true in the rest of Windows). In other words, those complex and uninviting buttons are simply shortcuts to functions you can find in the menus.

For example, if we want to create a new document, we could click on the file menu and select new:

Or we could simply click the ‘new’ icon on the toolbar:

Or, we could hit the keyboard combination “Control” + “N” as it states in the menu. All three of these methods accomplish the exact same thing.

Along these lines, if you let the mouse hover over such a button for about 3 seconds, a “tool tip” will appear to tell you what the button does:

Take some time to explore the various buttons lined along the top of the window with tool tips. Also, browse through the menus. You’ll notice some menu items have icons next to them (referencing which button will get you to that item) and some don’t (meaning the option is only available via the menu). Don’t worry about remembering anything specific for now, just look around a little.

Ask any questions you may have, though I may wait until later to answer questions about what specific functions do.

Toolbars

Before we dive into specific functions, I want to show you how toolbars work.

Basically, toolbars are containers that hold buttons with similar functions. So, for example, the “Formatting” toolbar holds controls for the font, font size, bold / italics / underline, the document’s justification (left, right, center, justified), etc. while the drawing toolbar hold controls for word art, colors, drawing lines, drawing rectangles, drawing circles, 3D, etc.

You can manage your toolbars by going to the “View” menu and selecting “Toolbars”:

Here you can see that, currently, the “Standard” and “Formatting” toolbars are set into the interface. You can also see that there are quite a few more toolbars that aren’t currently in view!

Let’s go through adding the “Drawing” toolbar to our interface so you can see what it looks like.

The drawing toolbar in particular will appear at the bottom of the Excel interface (while the others will appear in the middle of the screen, and you can move them wherever you want – you’ll see what I mean in a minute).

Before we add the toolbar, the bottom will look like this:

Then I’ll want to select the drawing toolbar from the menu:

This will cause the drawing toolbar to appear at the bottom:

That’s it! We’ve just successfully added a toolbar!

Now, it’s inconvenient all the way down there on the bottom, so let’s move it. On the very left edge of the toolbar is a vertical line that looks like it’s outset from the rest of the bar. This is what I call the ‘grab point.’ If you hover the mouse over this line, you’ll see it change from an arrow into a crosshair:

Once it does this, you can click the left mouse button and hold it down to ‘grab’ the toolbar. Holding the button down, you can then drag it around. Try grabbing the toolbar and dragging it into the middle of your book:

You’ll notice that when it’s not embedded into the interface, the toolbar has it’s own title bar, complete with a “close” button in the upper right. You can now grab the toolbar as you would any other window (clicking and holding on the title bar).

Now that we have it here, let’s go ahead and embed it in the upper section of toolbars so it’s more accessible and not hovering in the middle of our worksheet:

Take a moment and move your toolbars all over the place however you want. (You’ll notice that the File, Edit, View, etc. menus are also on a toolbar. WARNING, do not close the menu toolbar – you cannot get it back without reinstalling all of MS Office if you do this, so it’s probably best to leave this one alone ). Keep in mind that if they ever get messed up, you can use their grab point to move them around however you see fit. Here’s an alternate configuration:

Take some time to familiarize yourself with customizing the interface. You’ll notice that, in the toolbar menu, there’s an option to “customize.” This basically means you can create your own toolbar by selecting which buttons will be on it.

While somewhat on the subject of grab bars, I also want to show you how you can resize your rows and columns. Just like almost any other column header in Windows, if you hover your mouse over the boundary between two column headers, you will see the cursor change into little black arrows. Once you see this cursor, you can then “grab” the boundary and stretch or shrink it however you want:

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