I have found that I understand Excel because I seem to think
in Excel terms. Even before computers
(yes, I’m as old as dirt), I would create very rough, rough-drafts, then clean
them up. This is how to do Excel. Put your data in first, then move it around
until it is presentable to you, then format your cells to make presentable to
others.
That said, first select the cells or range you want to
change, then apply the formatting. There
are several ways to select your cells, often with varying methods of completing
the same task. Remember, Excel is the
third generation of popular spreadsheets:
Visicalc, then Lotus 123, now Excel.
PCs that ran Visicalc didn’t have a mouse, so there were lots of cursor
shortcuts. Here’s a few of the handy
ones:
Function Keys
– that row of keys at the top of your keyboard:
F1, F2, etc. There is one that is
very handy for moving around in Excel:
F5 – This is the GoTo button. Sometimes you don’t want to take your hands
off the keyboard and use your mouse. You
can press F5 and type in cell coordinates, as A1, to move right to a cell. This is especially handy if you have named
your cells or ranges.
Directional Keys
– These are those odd keys on the right that include cursors (↑, ↓,
←, and →), Page Up, Page Down, Home, End. Here is a good layout diagram from a website
called “All-About-Computer-Parts.”
All these keys are self-explanatory except for the End
key. Think of End as the
“End-of-the-Line” key. If you start with
your cursor at the top cell in a column in a table, when you press End, then
the Down cursor, the cursor will jump to the last cell in that column that has
something in it. If you start with an empty cell, End/Down will
jump down to the last empty cell in that column. Think of it this way: when you press End in conjunction with the
cursor keys (↑, ↓, ←, and →), your cursor will jump to the last cell in that
row or column that is similar (empty if you start on empty, full if you start
on full).
Paste this short spreadsheet into Excel,
then follow its instructions.
Start here.
|
Press End and ↓
|
(the down cursor)
|
to jump to the bottom
|
of this column
|
of text quickly.
|
Now press End and ↑
|
(the up cursor)
|
to jump to the top
|
of this column
|
of text quickly.
|
.
Command
Keys – Those unique computer keys:
Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Windows, Esc
Shift is powerful when used in
combination with the End/Down keys.
Click on one cell, hold down shift and click on another cell. (Go ahead, do this and see what happens.) You will select an entire range, like
dragging. Now combine it with
End/Down. You can select a whole column of
data without having to drag and scroll down (and down and down and down).
Now start here.
|
Press Shift, End and
↓
|
(the down cursor)
|
to jump to the bottom
|
of this column
|
of text quickly
|
and select
|
all the cells
|
between the top
|
and the bottom
|
cells.
|
From the bottom, see what happens when you combine End/Up (or Right or Left).
By adding Shift, you now get this:
By adding Shift, you now get this:
It’s all selected
and ready
for
formatting
or copying.
Ctrl (or Control) is handy, too. Holding down the Ctrl button while you select cells (or rows or columns) selects parts of your spreadsheet that aren’t next to each other. Let’s say you want to turn rows 1, 3 and 5 grey. Click the row numbers while you are holding down Ctrl. They will all be highlighted or selected, then change the fill color to grey (or some more interesting color).
So remember, use all the shortcuts at your fingertips to select your cells or range of cells first, then do your formatting. Please format to make your spreadsheet easier to read, do not format to make it a work of modern art which obscures your data.
