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About this lesson

Create your first Excel file, enter data and create a table.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the Excel workbook used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

First File - Completed.xlsx
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Quick reference

Topic

Creating your first Excel file.

When to use

Starting a new file for the first time.

Instructions

Excel Startup Choices

  • Open an existing file from the Most Recent list (at left)
  • Open an existing file from a folder (under the Most Recent List)
  • Create a new file from a blank file (top left of the large icons)
  • Create a new file based on one of Excel’s templates (the rest of the icons)

Starting a blank file

  • Create a Blank file from the main Excel window

Entering data

  • Select the first cell you want to work with and type in some text
  • Press Enter and the next cell will be selected
  • Enter some more text and press Enter

Creating a table of data

  • Select A4, type in “Animal” and press Tab (you should now be in B4)
  • Type in “Quantity” and press Tab (you should now be in C4)
  • Type in “Cost” and press Enter
  • At this point you’ll be taken to cell A5, the cell directly below the first cell you started tabbing from
  • Fill in some random animals, quantities and costs.  Use the tab keys to move to the next column, and the Enter key to go back to the start of the next row

Editing data

  • Select the cell to edit and press F2 to edit directly in the cell
  • Select the cell and click in the formula bar to edit in the formula bar
  • In either case the edits show up in both places

Saving your file

  • Go to the File tab and choose Save As
  • Browse to the location where you’d like to save the document and provide a name
  • The file will now be available on the Most Recent list when you re-open Excel
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  • 00:03 Let's go and create our very first Excel file now.
  • 00:07 What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start Excel 2013.
  • 00:09 And you'll notice that right away when I open it
  • 00:12 up I've got a whole bunch of really pretty big tiles going through here.
  • 00:17 Now, yours may not look exactly the same as mine.
  • 00:19 The contents depends on.
  • 00:21 What version of Excel you are.
  • 00:23 What country you're in.
  • 00:24 All those kind of different things.
  • 00:26 But the big key for
  • 00:26 me right on the top here is that there's a Blank workbook icon.
  • 00:30 The rest of these are templates that are provided by Microsoft for quick and
  • 00:34 easy use.
  • 00:35 But for the most part, what I find is that I need to build my own solutions.
  • 00:38 And for that, I'm gonna use a Blank workbook.
  • 00:40 So I'm gonna click on Blank workbook.
  • 00:43 And that takes me into a nice blank canvas where I get to create the world as I
  • 00:46 see it inside Excel, which is great.
  • 00:49 So what we're gonna do, is we're gonna start.
  • 00:51 I'm gonna build a Sports Store Inventory spreadsheet here.
  • 00:53 So, we're gonna do, is just start typing in cell A1.
  • 00:56 Sports Store Inventory, and you can see that it starts typing in the cell.
  • 01:01 It also starts typing in the formula bar.
  • 01:03 And as soon as I hit Enter, it commits that value to the cell.
  • 01:07 I'm now in cell A2.
  • 01:08 I'm gonna mark down what this is now.
  • 01:10 I'm just gonna start typing, Ball Inventory.
  • 01:14 And then I'm gonna hit Enter.
  • 01:16 I'm gonna hit Enter again.
  • 01:17 We'll go down to Cell 4.
  • 01:18 I'm gonna give this a column header Ball Type.
  • 01:22 We'll build a simple table.
  • 01:24 I'm gonna hit Tab.
  • 01:25 We'll put in Quantity.
  • 01:28 Oops, Quantity.
  • 01:31 And Tab, we'll hit Cost.
  • 01:33 And now I'll hit Enter.
  • 01:35 So you saw that I used Tab to commit my data this time.
  • 01:38 I used Enter at the top.
  • 01:39 And that dropped it down a cell.
  • 01:40 I'll use Tab, and kicked it to the right when I hit Enter after doing Cost,
  • 01:45 it dropped me back to the beginning of the column for Ball Type.
  • 01:50 So let's enter some data now we'll put in Soccer so we've got Soccer balls.
  • 01:54 Hit Tab, the quantity is 56, we'll hit Tab, the Cost is 8.99 and
  • 02:00 we'll hit Enter and it'll take me to go and put in some more data.
  • 02:04 So now I'll throw in let's see Football.
  • 02:07 Put in 84 of those.
  • 02:09 $7.97 cents.
  • 02:11 We'll put in Basketball 21 of those.
  • 02:16 At $7.25 cents.
  • 02:17 Baseball 65 at $5.23 cents.
  • 02:22 And Softball, 52 at $4.98 cents.
  • 02:26 So I've now created a very,
  • 02:29 very simple inventory listing here from some data that I might have had on paper.
  • 02:35 What can I do with it?
  • 02:36 Well there's a few different things I can do.
  • 02:38 Number one, my basketball seems to have lost its last l.
  • 02:42 So I wanna expand the column width so I can see it.
  • 02:44 So as I move my cursor between column A and
  • 02:48 B, I get this funny little two headed arrow.
  • 02:50 I'm gonna left-click and drag that open a little bit.
  • 02:53 And let it go.
  • 02:54 And now you can see I've widened my column up so
  • 02:57 now I can see the information that I had in those cells which is great.
  • 03:02 What if I decided that maybe I made a mistake on this and
  • 03:05 I don't know let's say that basketball was supposed to have a space in it.
  • 03:10 What can I do?
  • 03:10 Well if I select the information here I've got two options.
  • 03:14 I can go and click right in the formula bar and say you know what?
  • 03:16 There's supposed to be a space in basketball so
  • 03:19 I click between the t and the b.
  • 03:21 Type in a space and hit Enter.
  • 03:23 And you'll notice that it actually shows up in the worksheet grid.
  • 03:25 On the other hand that looks a little funny.
  • 03:28 I don't like the way that looks, so you know what I'm gonna undo that
  • 03:31 because maybe there wasn't supposed to be a space there after all.
  • 03:34 So I'll click the undo arrow, and that will put that back.
  • 03:37 Or, I could have edited it by going into the formula bar as well.
  • 03:41 The other thing that I could do is I could press F2, and
  • 03:45 F2 will actually allow me to edit in cell, you can see the cursor is
  • 03:48 actually flashing in the cell now, so if I were to hit Backspace a couple times.
  • 03:53 It starts change, making the changes right here.
  • 03:55 All right, and I'm gonna put those l's back and hit Enter.
  • 03:59 So that's how we can get in to start editing data.
  • 04:01 Most of the time,
  • 04:02 you'll probably just click in a cell and use the formula bar to do your editing.
  • 04:06 Unless you like keyboards and then F2 becomes your friend.
  • 04:10 Once I've got this setup the way I like,
  • 04:12 maybe it's looking good here I wanna save the file.
  • 04:14 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to File, we'll go to Save As and
  • 04:20 now I can choose where I'd like to save it.
  • 04:22 Let me go to Computer and
  • 04:23 I'm gonna save this on my Desktop and it just happens there happens to be there one
  • 04:27 already I'm gonna double-click on that and it asks me would I like to replace it.
  • 04:31 Yes.
  • 04:32 If it doesn't have this file existing for you,
  • 04:35 then you just type the File name in here and save.
  • 04:38 Save and it will save for you.
  • 04:40 Now what about getting it back.
  • 04:42 Let's close Excel, so
  • 04:44 in the top right-hand corner we're gonna hit the x will close excel.
  • 04:47 Gonna open Excel again.
  • 04:49 How do I find this when I need it again?
  • 04:51 Well, here's a cool thing about Excel is that right away, when I open up this Task
  • 04:54 pane, it tells me, hey, your most recent files you used was Sports Inventory.
  • 04:58 So if I click on that, it'll open it up for me right away.
  • 05:01 That's pretty nice.
  • 05:03 If I close Excel again.
  • 05:06 And I open it again.
  • 05:07 What if it isn't in that list?
  • 05:09 Well, then I could click Open Other Workbooks, go to Computer,
  • 05:13 go to my Desktop.
  • 05:14 And I can browse to find the file anywhere on my system using the tree on the side.
  • 05:18 As soon as I find it,
  • 05:20 click on it, say Open and it'll open my data backup for me to work with again

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