The Work Surface

Quick reference

• 00:04 This video focuses on the next most important thing to understand
• 00:08 about Excel which is the work surface, where we actually get our work done.
• 00:14 Excel is a spreadsheet program.
• 00:16 And basically what that means is that everything we do is done in cells.
• 00:20 It looks like a worksheet,
• 00:21 almost kinda like graph paper if you remember that from school.
• 00:25 So, in Excel everything is divided into rows and columns.
• 00:29 So we have across the top here, columns with letters.
• 00:32 And we've got rows down the left hand side.
• 00:34 When we're reading this grid, if I select this cell here,
• 00:37 we always refer to it with the letter first and then the number.
• 00:40 So the address of this cell will be F6, and the address of this cell would be G11.
• 00:47 And naturally, we can select multiple cells at the same time by left
• 00:50 clicking and dragging our mouse as well.
• 00:52 So this is a block from F5 through I11.
• 00:56 We always start with the top right hand corner and
• 00:58 go to the bottom right hand corner.
• 01:01 Now, there's also an area at the top here called the name box, and
• 01:05 this also helps us remember how we're actually referring to our cell.
• 01:09 The top left cell in any selection, or
• 01:11 the active cell, will show up in the name box here with its name, F3.
• 01:17 We've got I9.
• 01:19 If I wanted to go to B2 I could select this and type in B2 and
• 01:22 it would jump me directly there.
• 01:25 This box also has another feature, though.
• 01:27 Which is, if I click the drop down arrow, if there's any named objects in
• 01:31 my workbook like you can see here with table one.
• 01:34 We can select it, and
• 01:35 it will take us right to that specific object, which is quite handy.
• 01:40 The workbook also has worksheet tabs down at the bottom here.
• 01:43 You can see that in Excel 2016,
• 01:45 our workbooks only open with one worksheet tab.
• 01:48 That's sheet one.
• 01:49 But we can click the little plus icon here and we can make more tabs,
• 01:52 as many as we want for our work book.
• 01:55 We can then jump back to sheet one by just selecting that particular worksheet tab.
• 02:01 The formula bar is the area that goes across the top here, and
• 02:05 we use the formula bar a lot in Excel.
• 02:07 And you'll notice that it gives you the active contents of the cell.
• 02:10 Right now it says soccer and that is because it's actually looking at
• 02:14 the top left cell in our selection, which is cell A5 that shows soccer.
• 02:18 If we were to go over to cell C5,
• 02:20 it shows $8.99, which is what happens to be in that specific cell.
• 02:27 This can be used to edit cell contents.
• 02:29 It can be used to enter data.
• 02:31 So if I were to come over here and type in a 5 and press enter,
• 02:33 it would put it into the cell as well for me.
• 02:36 Or likewise I could go back, select myself, and
• 02:39 I could change the price on something to say $8.98 using the formula bar as well.
• 02:45 On the right hand side and the bottom, we have scroll bars.
• 02:49 These allow us to scroll up and down the worksheet by clicking the arrows, or
• 02:54 even grabbing the bar and
• 02:56 sliding the entire thing to go a little bit quicker, and the same goes with
• 02:59 the left right functionality by using the left right scroll bars as well.
• 03:05 Below the scroll bar in the bottom right corner here,
• 03:07 we have something called the zoom slider.
• 03:09 You can use this also in a couple of different ways.
• 03:12 You can grab the handle and slide it, to the left will make things smaller.
• 03:17 To the right will make things bigger and if you get it right back into the center
• 03:21 at 100%, it will show you the view that we started with.
• 03:25 And we can also use the plus or minus buttons to switch those around as well.
• 03:32 Another thing that shows up for us on occasion is the quick info area.
• 03:36 This is a little bit of tool tip text that helps us with certain things,
• 03:39 and you don't see it on the screen right now.
• 03:41 It'll show up down in this area right down here and
• 03:44 where that works is when we actually select some data.
• 03:48 So you'll notice that I've selected from cell C5 to C9 and
• 03:52 what's happened here is it's come back and it's told me the average is 6.882.
• 03:56 There's five items in here and the total, the sum is 34.41.
• 04:01 Now, I can change this by right clicking on it and
• 04:04 saying what would you actually like to see in here.
• 04:07 So we can see that we've got average count and sum, I could also go and
• 04:11 say give me the numerical count or the minimum, the maximum.
• 04:15 So let's click on minimum and
• 04:16 maximum, you'll notice that it also adds those to my quick information area.
• 04:21 Looks a little different when we select text because of course we can't
• 04:24 get a minimum, maximum, or sum of those.
• 04:28 But again, if I select multiple cells,
• 04:30 it will actually look at the entire range of data that is within that as well.
• 04:33 So there's all kinds of really good information
• 04:37 that you can actually get out of that little area there.
• 04:40 It can be very, very useful.

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