Office 2008 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter III.7. Being Intelligent with Data

In This Chapter

• Cutting out the jargon

• Making lists and tables

• Working with the List Manager

• Taking the PivotTable course

• Turning Office 2008 into a fully relational database

Dealing with data is fraught with mystery and jargon, not to mention thought and anticipation. Our goal is to take the mystery away and help you use the amazingly powerful tools in Excel to analyze your data. You find data analysis and presentation features unique to Excel for Mac, and we're pleased to be able to focus on them in this chapter.

Simplifying Database Jargon

Sometimes, a word's meaning changes, depending on context. In this chapter, we use the following words with these meanings:

• List: A list is a collection of data arranged in rows and columns, like in a table, that you can use to display and analyze sets of data.

• Database: A database is a collection of lists or tables.

Tip

A list in Excel 2008 for Mac and a table in Excel 2007 for Windows are the same thing.

Listing the List Rules

Note

Excel can figure out whether you have a table or list if your data follows these simple rules:

• The first row — and only the first row — includes column names. Those names are unique.

• The end of the table or list is the first completely empty row and/or the first completely empty column.

• Merged cells don't exist.

Lists can live in one of two places:

• List sheet: A sheet devoted entirely to a list.

• Worksheet: A list can be a range on a worksheet. More than one list can exist on a single worksheet. ...