Learn Excel 2010

Excel 2010 Tutorials

Microsoft Excel is a commercial spreadsheet application, written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. At the time of writing this tutorial the Microsoft excel version was 2010 for Microsoft Windows and 2011 for Mac OS X.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet tool capable of performing calculations, analyzing data and integrating information from different programs.

By default, documents saved in Excel 2010 are saved with the .xlsx extension whereas the file extension of the prior Excel versions are .xls.

Audience

This tutorial has been designed for computer users who would like to learn Microsoft Excel in easy and simple steps. It will be highly useful for those learners who do not have prior exposure to Microsoft applications.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of Computer peripherals like mouse, keyboard, monitor, screen etc. and their basic operations. You should also have the basic skills of file management and folder navigation’s.

Getting Started with Excel 2010

This chapter teaches you how to start an excel 2010 application in simple steps. Assuming you have Microsoft Office 2010 installed in your PC, start the excel application following the below mentioned steps in your PC.

Step 1 − Click on the Start button.

Step 2 − Search for Microsoft Excel 2010 from the submenu and click it.

This will launch the Microsoft Excel 2010 application and you will see the following excel window.

The following basic window appears when you start the excel application. Let us now understand the various important parts of this window.

File Tab

The File tab replaces the Office button from Excel 2007. You can click it to check the Backstage view, where you come when you need to open or save files, create new sheets, print a sheet, and do other file-related operations.

Quick Access Toolbar

You will find this toolbar just above the File tab and its purpose is to provide a convenient resting place for the Excel’s most frequently used commands. You can customize this toolbar based on your comfort.

Ribbon

Ribbon contains commands organized in three components,

• Tabs − They appear across the top of the Ribbon and contain groups of related commands. Home, Insert, Page Layout are the examples of ribbon tabs.
• Groups − They organize related commands; each group name appears below the group on the Ribbon. For example, group of commands related to fonts or group of commands related to alignment etc.
• Commands − Commands appear within each group as mentioned above.

Title Bar

This lies in the middle and at the top of the window. Title bar shows the program and the sheet titles.

Help

The Help Icon can be used to get excel related help anytime you like. This provides nice tutorial on various subjects related to excel.

Zoom Control

Zoom control lets you zoom in for a closer look at your text. The zoom control consists of a slider that you can slide left or right to zoom in or out. The + buttons can be clicked to increase or decrease the zoom factor.

View Buttons

The group of three buttons located to the left of the Zoom control, near the bottom of the screen, lets you switch among excel’s various sheet views.

• Normal Layout view − This displays the page in normal view.
• Page Layout view − This displays pages exactly as they will appear when printed. This gives a full screen look of the document.
• Page Break view − This shows a preview of where pages will break when printed.

Sheet Area

The area where you enter data. The flashing vertical bar is called the insertion point and it represents the location where text will appear when you type.

Row Bar

Rows are numbered from 1 onwards and keeps on increasing as you keep entering data. Maximum limit is 1,048,576 rows.

Column Bar

Columns are numbered from A onwards and keeps on increasing as you keep entering data. After Z, it will start the series of AA, AB and so on. Maximum limit is 16,384 columns.

Status Bar

This displays the sheet information as well as the insertion point location. From left to right, this bar can contain the total number of pages and words in the document, language etc.

You can configure the status bar by right-clicking anywhere on it and by selecting or deselecting options from the provided list.

Dialog Box Launcher

This appears as a very small arrow in the lower-right corner of many groups on the Ribbon. Clicking this button opens a dialog box or task pane that provides more options about the group.

Backstage View in Excel 2010

The Backstage view has been introduced in Excel 2010 and acts as the central place for managing your sheets. The backstage view helps in creating new sheets, saving and opening sheets, printing and sharing sheets, and so on.

Getting to the Backstage View is easy. Just click the File tab located in the upper-left corner of the Excel Ribbon. If you already do not have any opened sheet then you will see a window listing down all the recently opened sheets as follows;

If you already have an opened sheet then it will display a window showing the details about the opened sheet as shown below. Backstage view shows three columns when you select most of the available options in the first column.

First column of the backstage view will have the following options;

S.No.	Option & Description
1	SaveIf an existing sheet is opened, it would be saved as is, otherwise it will display a dialogue box asking for the sheet name.
2	Save AsA dialogue box will be displayed asking for sheet name and sheet type. By default, it will save in sheet 2010 format with extension .xlsx.
3	OpenThis option is used to open an existing excel sheet.
4	CloseThis option is used to close an opened sheet.
5	InfoThis option displays the information about the opened sheet.
6	RecentThis option lists down all the recently opened sheets.
7	NewThis option is used to open a new sheet.
8	PrintThis option is used to print an opened sheet.
9	Save & SendThis option saves an opened sheet and displays options to send the sheet using email etc.
10	HelpYou can use this option to get the required help about excel 2010.
11	OptionsUse this option to set various option related to excel 2010.
12	ExitUse this option to close the sheet and exit.

Sheet Information

When you click Info option available in the first column, it displays the following information in the second column of the backstage view −

• Compatibility Mode − If the sheet is not a native excel 2007/2010 sheet, a Convert button appears here, enabling you to easily update its format. Otherwise, this category does not appear.
• Permissions − You can use this option to protect the excel sheet. You can set a password so that nobody can open your sheet, or you can lock the sheet so that nobody can edit your sheet.
• Prepare for Sharing − This section highlights important information you should know about your sheet before you send it to others, such as a record of the edits you made as you developed the sheet.
• Versions − If the sheet has been saved several times, you may be able to access previous versions of it from this section.

Sheet Properties

When you click Info option available in the first column, it displays various properties in the third column of the backstage view. These properties include sheet size, title, tags, categories etc.

You can also edit various properties. Just try to click on the property value and if property is editable, then it will display a text box where you can add your text like title, tags, comments, Author.

Exit Backstage View

It is simple to exit from the Backstage View. Either click on the File tab or press the Esc button on the keyboard to go back to excel working mode.

In next tutorial i will Write about Entering Values, Move around and all about Workbook. Hope that it helps for you guys.