Head First Excel

Chapter 2. Visual Design: Spreadsheets as art

Most people usually use Excel for page layout.

A lot of formula-writing masters, who are familiar with just how powerful Excel can be, are shocked that people “just” use the software for showing information with a grid. But Excel, especially in its more recent versions, has become quite handy as a page layout tool. You’re about to get comfortable with some important and not-so-obvious Excel tools for serious visual design.

CRMFreak needs to present their financials to analysts

Because CRMFreak is a publicly traded company and is heavily influenced by what Wall Street analysts have to say about them, it’s really important that they do a good job with their public financial statements.

The CEO needs you to format CRMFreak’s income statement, using your Excel skills to make the formulas work correctly and provide an elegant presentation.

Let’s take a look at CRMFreak’s data....

Exercise

Here’s CRMFreak’s income statement data for the past year. What is their net income?

1. Write a formula to calculate Total revenue (cell B7), adding together the elements in the Revenue section.

   

2. Write a formula to calculate the Total cost of revenues (cell B12), adding together ...