Office 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9.  Creating and Navigating Worksheets

Most people don’t need much convincing to use Excel, Microsoft’s premier spreadsheet software. The program comes preinstalled on a lot of computers, making it the obvious choice for millions of number crunchers. Despite its wide use, however, few people know where to find Excel’s most impressive features or why they’d want to use them in the first place.

The Excel portion of this book fills that void, explaining everything from basic Excel concepts to time-and frustration-saving shortcuts. You’ll learn how Excel 2007 works, when to steer clear of obscure options that aren’t worth the trouble to learn, and how to home in on the hidden gems that’ll win you the undying adoration of your coworkers, family, and friends—or at least your accountant.

Of course, every Excel grandmaster needs to start somewhere. In this chapter, you’ll create a spreadsheet and learn how to move around in it, enter basic information, and save it for posterity. Along the way, you’ll take a quick tour of the Excel window, and stop to meet the different tabs in the ribbon, the status bar, and the formula bar.

Note

The Excel portion of this book is written with Microsoft’s latest and greatest release in mind: Excel 2007. This section won’t help you if you’re using an earlier version of Excel, because Microsoft has dramatically changed Excel’s user interface (the “look and feel” of the program). However, if you’re an unredeemed Excel 2003 or Excel 2002 fanatic, you can ...