LEARNING MICROSOFT EXCEL 2000
Copyright CIT, 1999-2000. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 2. BUILDING A SIMPLE SPREADSHEET/2

Inserting numbers
A friend from America is staying at your house for the week. Each night he rings his partner back in the States. The toll call costs were $21.24 on Monday, $18.56 on Tuesday, $22.66 on Wednesday, $34.22 on Thursday and $27.56 on Friday.

Step 2.8 Enter them as follows

Figure 2.6

Whoops you have left out Wednesday’s toll call. We want to put it in B3 and shift the other 2 down.What we shall do is insert a complete new row 3. It would be easier just to re-key B3, B4 and B5, but we want to teach you how to insert a line.

Step 2.9 Click on the 3 of the rows. It should highlight the row as follows.

Figure 2.7

Step 2.10 Choose Insert from the menu bar, and then Rows.

Figure 2.8

The spreadsheet should look as follows

Figure 2.9

Step 2.11 Enter 22.66 into cell B3.

Figure 2.10

You can use the same method to insert a column.

If you want to delete a row, simply highlight and from the Edit menu choose Delete. Make sure you understand the difference between the Delete from the Edit menu and the Delete on the keyboard.

Step 2.12 Highlight cells B1 to B5 and clear their contents so you have an empty spreadsheet.

Calculations
There is obviously not much point in setting up numbers if you are not going to do anything with them. What we shall do now is see how Excel enters equations.

Take for example the following spreadsheet

Figure 2.11

Step 2.13 Click on cell A1 and enter the value 25. Enter the value 14 into cell A2.

In cell A3 we want to put the sum of 25 and 14, but we do not write =25+14 (which is valid). What we really want to say is add the value stored in cell A1 to the value stored in cell A2 and store the result in A3.

Step 2.14 Click on cell A3 to make sure it is selected.

Step 2.15 Enter the following equation =A1+A2

This will total the contents of cells A1 and A2 and store the result in A3. Don’t forget the = sign which tells Excel that it is an equation.

Your spreadsheet should now look as follows

Figure 2.12

Note the equation is printed in the formula bar.

Step 2.16 Click on the Enter button.

Figure 2.13

Note how the equation appears in the formula bar, but the result appears in A3. To emphasise why we enter =A1+A2 rather than =25+14

Step 2.17 Change the value in A1 to 26. The spreadsheet should look as follows

Figure 2.14

See that A3 has changed as well, because the equation tells Excel to add the contents of A1 and A2 together, not 25 and 14.

Exercise two
Enter the values 25 and 15 into cells B2 and B3, and their sum in B4.

Exercise three
Enter values 18.2, 17.4, 5.2 into cells A2, B2 and C2 and their sum in D2. Did you forget the = sign at the beginning of equation?

Subtraction
To find the difference between the values in two cells write

=A1-A2

Multiplication
To find the product of the values in 2 cells write

=A1*A2

Notice the multiplication symbol used is the asterisk *.

Division
To find the ratio of the values in 2 cells write

=A1/A2

Exercise four
Work out what should be calculated for the following equations

Figure 2.15

Enter the spreadsheet to check your answers.

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