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Microsoft Excel – Basics & Fundamentals

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Excel is the most popular spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft. It plays a vital role in various working platforms like billing, analyzing, accounting, etc. While talking about Excel, we felt good about Excel’s having an estimated 750 million to 1.2 billion monthly global users.

The current version of Excel is version 16, and it was released in 2019. It offers immense features to its users for performing various tasks on it. If you are a newbie to learn Excel, don’t worry. It will be pretty easy for you because of its cool features and options.

With the help of this spreadsheet program, users can format, organize and calculate data in a spreadsheet. In Excel, you will find countless built-in functions and formulas for performing mathematical operations. It is a widely used business application all over the world. Microsoft not only provides an Excel app, but it also offers Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook applications. In this blog, we will go over the best things provided in the Excel app and what is the purpose of them.

Cells, Rows, & Columns of Excel

An Excel spreadsheet is made up of rows and columns. Each row and column is formed by cells. We can use these cells to enter our data or information. When you select a group of cells in the spreadsheet, it will be called a “Range” of data. We can denote the Excel spreadsheet using other words like sheets, and worksheets.

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Cell, Row, & Column

You can add up sheets in your Excel workbook as much as you want. In Excel, we can hide or unhide a row(s), column(s), or sheets. There is nothing that you can’t do with Excel, so it might be a great experience for you once you started learning it.

Basic Operations in Excel

If you are newly started out with Excel, then you have to be familiar with the below-mentioned operations. Let’s see one after another.

  • You have to begin by creating a new spreadsheet in Excel for doing some calculations.
  • Then you can perform basic computations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Basic OperationsPin
Basic Operations
  • With the help of formatting options, you can quickly format a cell or a range of cells in the spreadsheet.
  • You can add or delete rows and columns from the sheet.
  • To organize your data in alphabetical order in the worksheet, we suggest you use the sorting feature in Excel.
  • Inserting charts in an Excel spreadsheet must be interesting for you, and charts really help you to visualize the information more clearly.
  • It also provides pivot tables, VBA (Visual Basic Applications) & Macros for you to automate tasks in Excel.

Functions in Excel

As we said earlier, Excel has numerous built-in functions and formulas in it. Functions are used to perform complex mathematical operations that cannot be done manually or that are too difficult to do manually. For using them, we can just call the function and give the input details to perform operations on it. Excel has vast types of functions that can be used to perform various sorts of operations. Here, we have listed a few categories of functions with explanations to make it clear for you.

Logical Functions: In Excel, we can perform logical operations that evaluate the data whether it is TRUE or FALSE. For that, we can use functions like AND, OR, XOR, IF, IFERROR, etc.

Date and Time Functions: When you want to perform tasks with dates and times in Excel, you can go with date and time functions. For instance, to get the current date or time, converts minutes into seconds, calculate days between two dates, and so on.

Math Functions: By using the Math functions, we can perform operations like converting decimal numbers, finding logs, rounding a number, calculating random numbers, finding the sum of integers, and so on.

Trigonometry Functions: Trigonometry is nothing but dealing with the sides and angles of triangles. By doing so, we can use functions like SIN, COS, TAN, RADIAN, etc.

Formulas in Excel

To solve mathematical problems in the spreadsheet, we need to use formulas. In Excel, formulas are expressions that will operate the given input values or selected cells to produce the result. Every function has its unique formula in Excel.

For example, we can use the operator like +, , % to perform operations in Excel. Whenever we use operators or functions, you will see the formula in the Formula bar on your worksheet.

Formula barPin
Formula bar

Use Charts in Excel

Generally, charts are helpful to understand or analyze the information in a crystal clear way. Because charts are colorful, we can easily understand them by their visualizations. With the help of charts, we can compare two different sets of data as quickly as possible.

Charts sectionPin
Charts section

Creating or inserting charts in Excel is really joyous because we just have to enter the input details in the spreadsheet and select the chart type. Then Excel will automatically insert the selected chart for your data in the worksheet. There are various kinds of charts available in Excel and you can use them as per your preference. To say some chart types, bar, pie, column, dot, bubble, clustered, stacked, line chart, etc.

For instance, if you want to create a 3D column chart, you have to click on the Column & bar chart drop-down list under the Charts section and select the 3D column chart. When you hover the cursor on any of the chart options, it will display the chart in your worksheet, as shown below.

Inserting ChartPin
Inserting Chart

End Note

Here, we have outlined only a little about Excel, because it has vast features to explain. We don’t want to stuff all the information regarding Excel on this page, so you can get more from our upcoming posts. So far, you can understand what is Excel, the Features of Excel, and its purposes. Stay tuned to get the forthcoming interesting write-up on our site aawexcel.com.

FAQ

How does that Office 2019 cost?

It costs $149.99. Once you get that, you can use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Can I get Excel for free?

No, you have to pay for Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions, but you can get one month free trial without any charge.

When was Excel launched?

Microsoft launched this spreadsheet application in 1985.

Is Office 356 worth buying?

Yes, it is the best choice for you to use all the Office apps.

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