Introduction
Familiarity with Microsoft Excel is a requirement for many jobs today. Workers in numerous offices use Excel to track and report information. Sales reps track leads, prospects, commissions, and travel expenses in Excel. Workers on the factory floor log schedules and quality data in Excel.
Excel is an amazingly flexible program. A new Excel worksheet offers a seemingly endless blank canvas of rows and columns where you can enter, summarize, and report data of any type. Charts and other data visualization tools can convert a page full of numbers to a visual snapshot. Pivot tables can summarize thousands of detailed records to a one-page summary in a few mouse clicks.
If you’ve never opened Excel, or if you’ve used Excel only to neatly arrange lists in columns, this book will get you up to speed with the real-life skills needed to survive in a job that requires familiarity with Excel.
When a potential employer asks if you know Excel, you need to ask which version of Excel. There are a lot of products available that have Excel in the name but offer a different subset of commands.
• Excel 2013 is the most recent version of the full-featured Excel program. The full version of Excel is what you will find in use in most job environments.
• Excel Web App is browser-based version of Excel. Whereas the browser is great for displaying existing Excel worksheets, the Web App allows users to enter new data and formulas in an Excel workbook while online. Those users do not need to have Excel installed on their computers. Mobile workers today might use Excel Web App to access their Excel data while they are out of the office. You also might expect college students to use Excel Web App to collaborate on group projects using this free version of Excel.
• Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 are similar to Excel 2013. If you learned how to use Excel 2013 and begin work where the company uses Excel 2007, you will be able to transfer most of your skills. Some features, such as sparklines, are missing. The Excel 2007 File menu offers far fewer choices than the Excel 2010 and Excel 2013 File menus. (In Excel 2007, the word File was replaced with an Office logo inside a round circle in the upper-left corner of the program. This was a bad idea and Microsoft went back to the word File in Excel 2010.) For the most part, you should find yourself comfortable working in Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 using the knowledge that you learn about Excel 2013 using this book.
• Excel 2003, Excel 2002, Excel 2000, and Excel 97 are collectively known as the legacy versions of Excel. Although the concepts of entering data and formulas in the worksheet are the same, the entire command structure is different in these versions of Excel. Instead of the intuitive ribbon interface, you will find long text lists of commands organized on menus, such as File, Edit, View, Insert, and so on. Although the menu system is harder to learn, hundreds of millions of people originally learned about Excel using these menus. Nearly half the companies with Excel installed are still hanging on to their legacy installations of Excel. Be prepared to have a steep learning curve as you try to find where the Excel 2013 commands are located in the old Excel menus.
Note
If this is your first experience with Excel, going to work in an office that is still using Excel 2003 is going to present some frustrations for you and the employer as you try to adjust to the older version of Excel. If the company is still using Excel 2003, it either means that the company didn’t have the money to upgrade or that the people at the company are firmly entrenched with the old version of Excel. Be up front with your manager. Explain that you learned Excel using Excel 2013. That manager resisted upgrading to Excel 2013 because he or she didn’t want to take the time to learn the new ribbon interface. As someone who learned on Excel 2013, it will be just as intimidating to learn where familiar commands are in the old Excel environment.
Who Should Read This Book
Excel 2013 Absolute Beginner’s Guide is recommended for anyone who wants to use Excel. Whether this is your first time entering data in Excel or you’ve used Excel before but need to get caught up on the new functionality, this book walks you through the steps and gets you comfortable using Excel.
How This Book Is Organized
This book teaches you the important functions and uses for Microsoft Excel. As each chapter progresses, it builds on skills learned in previous chapters. The concepts in this book allow you to get started by entering data and formulas in Excel. However, the later chapters on pivot tables and charting provide you with enough advanced techniques to allow you to thrive in any job requiring Excel.
Downloading the Example Files
You can download the sample files for this book from quepublishing.com.
Conventions Used In This Book
The following conventions are used in this book:
• At the beginning of each chapter, you’ll find a quick overview of the major topics that will be explained as you read through the material that follows.
• The end of each chapter reviews key points you just learned about.
Most steps in this book require the use of the mouse. All mouse instructions are based on a right-handed mouse. Click refers to a single click using the left mouse button. Double-click refers to a double-click using the left mouse button. Right-click refers to a single click using the right mouse button.
If a keyboard shortcut is provided, you have to press two or more keys on the keyboard at the same time. The two keys are shown with the key names joined with a plus (+) sign. For example, Ctrl+V requires you to hold down the Ctrl key, press the V key once, then let go of both keys.
Special Elements
This book also includes a few special elements that provide additional information not included in the basic text. These elements are designed to supplement the text to make your learning faster, easier, and more efficient.
Tip
A tip is a piece of advice—a little trick, actually—that helps you use your computer more effectively or maneuver around problems or limitations.
Note
A note is designed to provide information that is generally useful but not specifically necessary for what you’re doing at the moment. Some are like extended tips—interesting, but not essential.
Caution
A caution tells you to beware of a potentially dangerous act or situation. In some cases, ignoring a caution could cause you significant problems—so pay attention to them!