Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Create your first Excel file, enter data, and create a table.
Quick reference
Creating Your First File
Instructions
Starting a blank file
- If Excel opens to a Home screen, click New blank workbook
- If you are in a workbook, go to File -> Home and click New blank workbook
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
Opening a Saved File
- Go to the File tab to open Excel’s “Backstage” screen
- Recently used files
- Listed under Recent on the File Tab’s Home and Open pages
- Browse recently used folders
- Go to Open and click “Folders”
- Browse your computer
- Go to Open and click Browse (bottom of the second column)
- 00:04 In this video, we're going to create a new workbook and save it and
- 00:07 show you that entire end-to-end experience.
- 00:10 So whether you start from the startup screen like this and
- 00:14 click New blank workbook, or whether your Excel opens into a blank workbook,
- 00:19 this is where we want to start.
- 00:20 And what we're going to do is we're going to go in and
- 00:22 we're going to start entering our data.
- 00:24 And I'm going to start right down here in cell A8, and I'm going to go and
- 00:28 put in the sample data set that I'm using.
- 00:30 So we're going to start with Ball Type, I'm going to hit Tab.
- 00:33 I'm going to go and type in Quantity, and hit Tab, and Cost, and hit Enter in order
- 00:38 to start wrapping my text down to put in the different lines of the table.
- 00:42 Now, I'm going to go and type in some values here.
- 00:44 So we're going to go Soccer and 56 and 8.99, hitting Tab each way along the way
- 00:49 until we get to the end of the line, where I'm going to hit Enter.
- 00:52 Okay, so some nice easy data entry, but
- 00:55 now I'm going to start making some mistakes.
- 00:58 So I'm going to cut and put in football and 7.97.
- 01:02 I'm going to go and type in Basketballs, and
- 01:05 we're going to go and put in 21 and 7.25, okay?
- 01:08 So there's a few different things that are going on here.
- 01:11 Number one, I typed in Basketballs, and what I've got is Basketbal, B-A-L.
- 01:17 If I click on the cell, we can see in the formula bar,
- 01:20 this is what the real data is in the cell.
- 01:22 So my data columns here are not wide enough to display everything.
- 01:26 So I'm going to go a mouse between column A and B, left click, and
- 01:31 just drag this a little bit wider so I can see all of the text.
- 01:35 And now, I want to start fixing some things.
- 01:38 So for Basketballs, I didn't really want three l's and an s.
- 01:43 So what I'm going to do is, right in the formula bar here, I'm just going to click
- 01:47 and I'm going to backspace a couple of times, and I'm going to hit Enter.
- 01:50 So that's one way we can correct it is by selecting the cell,
- 01:53 clicking in the formula bar, and making our corrections.
- 01:57 The other way is we can come to the cell and we can actually type F2.
- 02:02 And what F2 does is it actually puts Excel into edit mode.
- 02:07 And inside edit mode, even though we don't actually see anything happening in
- 02:11 the formula bar, you can see that we've got our cursor flashing in the cell.
- 02:15 And within here, I can now left arrow a few times,
- 02:18 get my cursor over to the Fot, put in an extra o, and hit Enter.
- 02:22 And you'll notice that it works nicely.
- 02:24 And if I select the cell,
- 02:26 you can see even in the formula bar that the data is correct.
- 02:29 Okay, so just some basic entries.
- 02:32 Now, I'm going to put in a little bit more data here and get my file ready to go.
- 02:36 So bear with me just a second.
- 02:39 All right, so I've done some tweaking and got my file set up exactly the way I want.
- 02:43 And don't worry, we're going to teach you how to do all of this formatting and
- 02:47 find stuff later.
- 02:48 The important part here is that I've got a completed example now that I want to save.
- 02:53 So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to File,
- 02:57 and I'm going to choose Save As.
- 02:59 And within this, I'm now going to go and choose to Browse.
- 03:04 This will bring up the little Windows list here.
- 03:06 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and
- 03:10 navigate to the folder that I actually want to use here, and
- 03:15 I'm going to save this one here as Creating Your First File-Complete.
- 03:20 And we're going to choose Save.
- 03:22 Now, at this point, if everything works nicely,
- 03:26 it should drop me back out into Excel, and everything is good to go.
- 03:30 So now what?
- 03:32 Well, if I'm done with the file, I can just go File and choose Close.
- 03:38 What if we want to use it again?
- 03:40 Whether we open Excel into a blank workbook or into the start screen,
- 03:44 what we'll notice is that if we go to File on our Home tab here, you'll notice that
- 03:48 under your recent files, it is your very first file right away here.
- 03:52 So I can now go and click on this and I can reopen it.
- 03:56 And if it's not the first file in the list, well, I can browse for it and
- 03:59 open it that way.
- 04:00 One thing I do want to throw out, though,
- 04:02 that's kind of important to understand about files is that this file is
- 04:06 actually stored in a folder that is sinking to SharePoint.
- 04:09 Whether it's OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint,
- 04:13 you have the ability to turn on AutoSave.
- 04:16 This is not evident for files that are saved in a nonsyncing folder.
- 04:21 This is an important feature if you like the ability to automatically save changes
- 04:26 you make to your documents.
- 04:28 So if you notice a spelling mistake or something like that, you can fix it and
- 04:32 it will automatically be saved.
- 04:33 You never have to hit the Save button again.
- 04:36 Save As will allow you to save it as a different file.
- 04:39 If you don't want that and you see this button on in the top here,
- 04:42 you're going to want to click that to turn it off.
- 04:44 And at that point, saves need to be done manually in order to save your data.
- 04:49 And you'll be prompted if you've made changes in a workbook to save it before
- 04:53 you close it.
- 04:53 Okay, so that only is true if you're actually working with files
- 04:57 that are either access directly from SharePoint, OneDrive, or OneDrive for
- 05:01 Business, or
- 05:02 if you're working on a copy that is saved in a locally syncing folder to the web.
- 05:07 Just something to keep in mind because it definitely changes the way
- 05:12 the Excel behavior actually works.
Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.