Excel for Beginners: Learn Excel 2016, Including an Introduction to Formulas, Functions, Graphs, Charts, Macros, Modelling, Pivot Tables, Dashboards, Reports, Statistics, Excel Power Query, and More

By Greg Shields

If you have always wanted to learn how to use Excel but feared that it would be too technical and time-consuming, then keep reading...

Microsoft Excel is one of the most commonly used programs across all industry and geopolitical lines. Despite this fact, many business people, even those who interact with Excel regularly, don't understand the essentials that can really further their career.

The truth is that most people find the task of learning about Excel overwhelming when confronted with a thousand-page book.

Could you be one of them?

You see, more information is not always better, especially if you want to save time and effort.

That's why this book focuses on the basics and what you'll really need on a daily basis.

Inside Excel for Beginners: Learn Excel 2016, Including an Introduction to Formulas, Functions, Graphs, Charts, Macros, Modelling, Pivot Tables, Dashboards, Reports, Statistics, Excel Power Query, and More, you'll find tips and tricks for dealing with:

• A wide variety of different formulas
• An array of functions
• Macros for every occasion
• Pivot Tables and Power View
• The basics of VBA
• And Much More

Furthermore, you will find plenty of time-saving tips, like how to switch between absolute and relative cell references with just a few simple keystrokes. Excel is needed in a data-heavy world, so do yourself a favor and make sure you are getting the most out of the time you put into it.

So if you have ever wondered how to enter data more efficiently, manipulate cells or worksheets to their full potential, stop wondering and click "buy now"!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Shields
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393042747

Book preview

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Introduction

Microsoft Excel is an extremely useful and malleable program that is also rather ‘bareboned’ when it comes to presenting you with all of your available options. When you are first starting out, it is important to remember that using Excel is a skill, and as with any skill, it can be improved over time. So don’t get discouraged; it will get easier each day you use it.

If you know how to use it properly, Excel can provide you with all of the tools needed to organize a wide variety of information types in a grid-based interface. Excel has been around for nearly thirty years, and many of the features offered in the first edition of the software are still going strong today.

One of the primary uses for Excel comes from the financial sector as Excel allows users to create their own formulas and use them to calculate anything from as complex as a corporation’s annual report all the way down to a simple sales forecast. You will also find Excel used for a variety of organizational and tracking tasks including invoicing, contact lists, status reports and more. The program is also useful when it comes to working with large sets of data, such as during statistical analysis for its graphing and charting functions.

Excel stores data in workbooks and each workbook can contain as many worksheets as you need. Worksheets are individual and fully customizable spreadsheets which you will interact with directly. Worksheets are broken down into horizontal rows and vertical columns with each row and column broken down into individual cells. Interacting with cells is the primary form of interaction when it comes to worksheets and cells can store text as well as numbers.

If filled with numbers, each cell can also be linked to other cells through the use of mathematical formulas. Cells can be told to use formulas and then display the results of the calculation. Each cell can also be given a unique color, border, font and more. When using Excel, you can create formulas or make use of a wide variety of formulas already preprogrammed. The preprogrammed formulas offer a wide variety of options including calculating interest payments, determining the standard deviation, and most common mathematical and financial equations.

While you are most likely familiar with the table function found in Microsoft Word, the charts available in Excel offer a much wider range of visualization options from a simple pie chart to complicated multipoint pivot charts. When it comes to complicated formatting and sorting of lots of data, Excel tends to be your best choice, especially if the graphed data may need to change on the fly.

The other main thing that Excel does extremely well is helping to identify trends by making specific variables much easier to view in chart form. The wide variety of variables at your fingertips makes understanding complex ideas much easier and less time-consuming. This is in part because of the way that you can use Excel to bring disparate points of data together through the use of workbooks and interconnected worksheets. What it boils down to is that if you are in an information-based field and you are not yet using Excel or an analog regularly, you are most likely putting in more work than you need to in order to achieve the results you want.

Chapter 1: Basics

Entering and Editing Data

If you wish to enter text or numbers

Choose the cell you wish to fill with your data and designate your choice by clicking on it.

Enter the information you would like to put into the cell and finish by pressing either the TAB key or the ENTER key. If you instead wish to move to a new line in the already existing cell, instead press the ENTER key in conjunction with the ALT key.

If you wish to enter data into multiple cells at once

Begin by selecting the cell or cells you wish to include the data.