Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Create your first Excel file, enter data and create a table.
Quick reference
Topic
Creating your first Excel file.
When to use
Starting a new file for the first time.
Instructions
Excel Start up 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 menu 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
- 00:05 When we first open Excel 2016,
- 00:07 we'll be greeted with a screen that looks like this.
- 00:10 You'll notice that you have a blank workbook on the upper left here, and
- 00:13 a bunch of colorful little templates that Microsoft has actually designed for
- 00:17 us that we can open up if we want to start from a template project.
- 00:21 On the left hand side, you'll see that I have my username over here.
- 00:25 I've got New, which is what's showing us the screens that we see over here.
- 00:29 I've got Recent, that'll show you that I've worked with a lot of sports inventory
- 00:33 files as I've been recording here.
- 00:35 And we've got Open, which will allow me to drill into files that are either stored in
- 00:40 OneDrive or SharePoint or on my Mac,
- 00:42 depending on what I've actually hooked up and set up in my version of Excel.
- 00:47 I'm gonna go back to New, and I'm gonna double click on Blank Workbook to open
- 00:52 a completely blank workbook and start from scratch.
- 00:57 What I'm gonna do now is go down to cell A4 and
- 01:00 I'm going to start with the sample that I was working with before.
- 01:03 I'm gonna enter ball type, and hit enter, and I'm gonna throw in
- 01:08 a couple of different ball types that I might have in a store here.
- 01:12 So, we'll go with football and hit enter and basketball.
- 01:16 Oops.
- 01:17 Basketball, and hit enter, as well.
- 01:20 I'm gonna arrow up now and work my way across a little bit.
- 01:23 I could put in Quantity.
- 01:27 Having some spelling challenges.
- 01:28 And Tab.
- 01:29 And Cost.
- 01:30 And when I hit Enter now, of course it'll drop down underneath Quantity,
- 01:35 because that's where I started tabbing from, and I can put in 56 and
- 01:39 $8.99 as my cost, and Enter.
- 01:41 And I'll put in 84 of these, Tab, $7.97, and Enter.
- 01:46 So that I can actually work through my table a little bit more quickly if my
- 01:49 typing skills were a little bit more speedy than I'm demonstrating here.
- 01:53 So we'll just put Enter, there we go.
- 01:57 Now, some of the stuff that we might do when we're actually working with our data
- 02:01 here is we may want to go back and actually edit something.
- 02:04 And there's a couple of ways to do that.
- 02:06 So, I'm gonna edit the quantity of my football over here, and
- 02:10 what I'm gonna do is I'm going to press F2.
- 02:13 And as you can see on my keyboard, that actually goes and adjusts the brightness.
- 02:17 I need to hold down function key, F2, in order to get into edit mode.
- 02:21 And you can now see that the cursor is flashing after 84.
- 02:25 So I could go and change this.
- 02:27 What's interesting, though, is if you look in the formula bar,
- 02:30 you can see that we also have 84, there's no cursor flashing.
- 02:33 But if I were to change it to 845, you'll notice that it changes in both places.
- 02:38 It's still in edit mode.
- 02:40 I can now hit Enter and it will actually put that into the cell.
- 02:44 And when I mouse over the formula bar, it's showing in both places.
- 02:49 I could also, if I wanted to, edit from the formula bar by selecting the 5 on end,
- 02:54 and pressing Delete.
- 02:55 You'll notice it's changed inside the cell, as well, before I've even hit Enter.
- 02:59 We can now hit Enter and it'll commit it in there, as well.
- 03:01 So a couple of different ways to edit.
- 03:04 The last thing that we might want to do with a file is we may want to save it.
- 03:07 If it's showing as Workbook 1, we could just hit the Save icon in
- 03:12 the quick access toolbar, and that would automatically launch the save as dialogue.
- 03:16 Normally, we use this button to save a workbook that we've
- 03:19 already saved under the same name.
- 03:21 If want the drive specifically to the Save As command, we would go to File, Save As,
- 03:27 and at this point we get the dialog that allows us to go and choose the locations.
- 03:32 Now, if you need to see a little bit more than just your most recent locations,
- 03:36 you can click this little drop down arrow and
- 03:38 it will expand it into the full blown interface where we can actually go and
- 03:42 drill into the different folders that we want.
- 03:45 So, if I were to go here and I could name this workbook whatever I like.
- 03:50 I'm just gonna call it Test.
- 03:51 At this point, it's gonna save it into this particular folder that I've selected.
- 03:56 We'll say Save.
- 03:57 The workbook now takes on a new name at the top and when I go back to open a new
- 04:02 file at this point in time, it will now be available from the recent list
- 04:06 when I go back to Open, which I can also show you by going here to Open.
- 04:12 And you'll find that it's now actually showing on my recent list, as well.
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