Chapter 1. Creating and Navigating Worksheets
The best way to avoid potential headaches is to take a quick tour of Excel as you start creating a spreadsheet. That's what you do in this chapter. Along the way, you learn how to enter information in the Excel window and how to open and save spreadsheet files.
Creating a Basic Worksheet
When you first launch Excel, it starts you off with a new, blank worksheet called Sheet1. A worksheet is the grid of cells where you type your information and formulas, and it takes up most of the window, as shown in Figure 1-1. This grid is the most important part of the Excel window. It's where you perform all your work, such as entering data, writing formulas, and reviewing the results. (A collection of one or more worksheets is called a workbook, which is also sometimes called a spreadsheet file).
Here are a few basics about Excel's grid:
The grid divides your worksheet into rows and columns. Excel identifies columns with letters (A, B, C …), and rows with numbers (1, 2, 3 …).
The smallest unit in your worksheet is the cell . Cells are the rectangular boxes that store your text or numbers. Excel identifies each cell using a shorthand name derived from the column and row it's sitting in. For example, C6 is the address of a cell in column C (the third column), and row 6 (the sixth row). Figure 1-2 shows this cell, which looks like a rectangular box. Incidentally, ...