Excel 2000 in a Nutshell

The External Side of Excel

Besides the menus and toolbars there are some external elements that affect the way Excel works. In order to effectively use Excel, you need to have a firm grasp on the concepts of worksheets, workbooks, and templates.

Even if you have used other spreadsheet software packages, if you are new to Excel the concept of workbooks and worksheets may be a little foreign. Excel uses the concept of a book that contains multiple related pages and creates workbooks that contain related sheets or worksheets. Each workbook contains different chart sheets.

Note

You can change the way Excel opens by using switches. For example, if you always look at the Sales workbook, you may want to create a shortcut that opens up the workbook when you run Excel (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE or C:\AnnualSales\Sales.xls). You can find more information about using switches in Chapter 3.

By default a workbook is created with three worksheets. Workbooks have an extension of .xls . By default, Excel names workbooks Book1, Book2, etc. and worksheets are name Sheet1, Sheet2, etc. You can rename a workbook when you save it and you can rename a worksheet by right-clicking on the sheet tab and selecting the Rename option. You can switch between the worksheets by clicking on the corresponding sheet tab at the bottom of the window. Additional worksheets can be added using Insert → Worksheet (refer to Chapter 6). Chart sheets are created when you create a new chart using Insert ...