Lesson's Objectives.
At the end of this tutorial, the learner should be able to;
Understand Excel basic terminologies and their functions
Open a new Excel Workbook
Save an already opened workbook
From our last lesson, you have learned various ways you could locate and open the Excel application, it is now time to start working on the Excel application and we shall begin by getting familiar with the basic structures of the application, terminologies and their functions.
Once you Start Excel you are by default having a New Blank Workbook. with a default name of Book1, This can be changed or customized to a more preferred one. You would have to save the workbook by pointing on the Office button, select Save As, then select the type of Excel Workbook to retain all customization you have done on the default Book1
(note: this look is different in other versions of excel)
When you Start Excel you should first see a blue bar at the very top of your screen. This is called the Title Bar. The title bar is where you will see the name of your Workbook once you have saved it. (Note that if you have not saved a Workbook, the default name would be Book*). As you are familiar with Windows, you will notice to the right of the Title Bar the Minimize (hyphen), Restore (two squares) and Close (X) buttons.
How to Save A workbook
Later in the course of this lesson, we would talk more on Excel workbook(s).
Excel workbook, just like every other workbook you have come across is a single file that could contain more worksheets that we would be using to carry out all activities on Excel.
Imagine in a bookstore, you have a shelf that can house a number of books, Each book has a number of pages that constituent the book itself. Now apply the same idea with Excel workbook. it is needed to separate files from each-other and for easy locating, readability, analysis, pls name more based on your idea of the bookstore and the shelve.
There are many ways and formats that we can save our data in Excel as, but by far the most common is the default *. xls. (The asterisk represents your chosen file name). Some of the other popular formats are the *. xlt(Template) *. txt (Tab delimited), *. xml (Extensible Markup Language - available in newer versions only) and *. web page (obviously a web page).
To see what I mean go to File - Save As. . . and Excel will display the Save As dialog box. This is where you initially give your Workbook a name (File name:), nominate a file type (Save as type:) and a location (Save in:).
If you select the drop arrow to the right of the Save as type: box you will see a list of all different types of formats an Excel Workbook can be saved as. You may notice that there are different choices of the .xls types. These different types are for backward compatibility with other versions of Ms. Excel. You can also save the Workbook as multiple versions although, it is strongly recommend doing this only if you need to, as it will increase the file size by 10-50% and render some of Excel’s newer features unusable.
When you are saving a Workbook for the first time Excel will display the Save As dialog box no matter which method you use to save it. There are a number of ways to save a workbook, the most common ways that can be used are:
- by locating File very close to the title bar, and selecting Save
- by locating the Save tool on the toolbar
- by using the command (Ctrl + S)
If we close a Workbook that we have made changes to, Excel will ask us (via a message box) if we wish to save the changes we have made ( note If we close a Workbook without making any changes, no message will appear and Excel will close without saving).
How to create more new workbooks
Just as you can have more books in the shelf, we can also create more Workbooks in Excel which would be used for different kind of activities, in fact the only limit to the amount of Workbooks we can have or open is restricted by the available memory of the PC.
There are also a number of methods that can be used to create more Workbooks.
- by locating the File tab very close to the title bar, then selecting New
- by using the command (Ctrl + N )
Whichever method we use Excel will create a new Workbook and the name (by default) will be Book2 or the next number in the sequence. As soon as we have created our new Workbook it will automatically become what is known as the Active Workbook. This means the workbook in which you are currently clicked, the one that is currently activated among the thousands you could have open down on your computer.
The other Workbooks will still be open, but NOT Active! This is because there can only ever be one Active Workbook at any one time.
To switch between open Workbooks;
- go to Window on the worksheet menu bar and you will see the names of all open Workbooks.
- you can also use the command (Alt + Tab key)
To activate one of the other open Workbooks, simply select it and puff! it will become the active one. Close Book2 now so that we only have one Workbook open. As mentioned above you will not be asked if you wish to save, unless changes have been made.
Congratulations, you have now successfully completed this lesson
Click here to Start Next Lesson
In Lesson 2 Getting Started with Excel, we shall discuss;
Various uses of Ms. Excel
Identify the various parts of the Excel window
Scroll through a worksheet, navigate and perform actions between worksheets
Create and save a workbook file
Enter text, numbers, and dates into a worksheet
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