Microsoft Excel Basics

This is guide is intended to help people with little or no experience using Excel get acquainted with its basic features.  In this tutorial, you will learn how to create basic spreadsheets with simple formatting, sort data in your spreadsheets, and create simple formulas to work with the data in your spreadsheets.

Note: This guide is based on the desktop version of Excel 2016 for Windows.  Earlier or different editions may function somewhat differently.

Excel is a spreadsheet program.  Spreadsheets are essentially large tables for entering and analyzing data. An Excel spreadsheet provides an array of cells, arranged into rows and columns, where data of a variety of types can be entered. Each cell is identified by its column letter and row number (for instance, the cell in the 3rd column of the second row would be C2.) Generally, each row represents a complete set of data, and each column represents a type of data common to each data set. 

Example The spreadsheet below contains basic academic data about (fictional) students.  Each row represents data about a particular student.  Each column represents a type of data that is to be entered for all students included.

These roles can be reversed (columns as data sets, rows as data types), but this how Excel is used most commonly.

Entering Data in an Excel Spreadsheet

To edit the data in a cell, either double-click on the cell or edit the data from within the formula bar (the text box located directly above the spreadsheet with the “fx” symbol next to it).  Single-clicking and typing will overwrite the data in the cell, so be careful with that.

Creating a New Spreadsheet

First, determine what data you want in your spreadsheet. Then, open Excel and select the “Blank Workbook” option from the landing screen (see example below.)

Next, make each piece of information you want in each data set the name of one your columns, by typing those names across the first row of your sheet (see example below).  Generally, you’ll want the first column to be the information that most clearly identifies each set of data (in this case, the student’s name). 

(NOTE: It's usually a good idea to do something to distinguish the column names from the rest of the data, like bolding the text. You can do this by selecting a cell with text in it and clicking the "B" toward the left of the Home Menu, which is highlighted in the example, below.  In the formatting section of this guide, you will learn how to access other options for formatting text.)

You can then enter appropriate data into your spreadsheet.