in this session I'm going to go over some of the basic features of Microsoft Excel such as adding
formulas in a cell to calculate values formatting part of the worksheet and using various formulas
such as some maximum minimum average and count so let's assume we have this data here in Excel I
simply type this there is nothing magical about it you just type those values and then those values
the first thing that we are going to learn here is how to format these values here these numbers into
currency so all you have to do is you select the cells that you want to format a certain way with a
certain type formatting and then we can either click here under dollars or in the drop-down
a different currency or we can click on the drop down here and choose currency and it is the dollar
amounts have been entered now at this point we are going to learn how to add a formula in this
cell to get the totals for training for all the months so one of the concepts that is important
to understand is that all formulas in Excel start with the equal sign so you have the equal sign and
then you have the function the function could be sum or it could be something else and there
are hundreds of functions in Excel we'll get to those later then the third part of it is the range
that you want to calculate or what you want to calculate now the range it's typically expressed
by the cell address for it or the reference to it the cell reference to it so for example if
I wanted to calculate these numbers from here to here that would be e six through fourteen so if
I could put in here e six colon e fourteen and notice it's highlighted in blue and also it's
displayed here in the formula bar and then we hit enter here in a moment so again you have the equal
sign the function whatever the function is and then the range under the area within the range
it's represented by a colon and then you hit enter and that is going to be calculated so you can have
those calculations anywhere in any cell as long as it contains a specific formula so in this case
here the easiest would be for us to insert this formula and I'll show you the first one by doing
this man we do the equal sign then this will be c6 so we need the function first then c6 : that
represents anything from here to here through e6 and then hit enter so that's one way to do
the calculation here the other way to do the calculation is by using this under editing here
you have the this drop down here for some average count numbers max minimum and more functions as
well so let's say we want the sum here so the sum we click on sum here and notice it's selected
this section automatically if you're going to use this feature however make sure that it's
calculating the right range of cells if that is correct you just hit enter and now it did it for
you automatically another method took to enter the formula here is by hitting the equal sign
and the function and then you can simply select the range that you want to calculate or you can
click on the actual cell references in that way you don't have to line them up manually then you
hit enter and there it is the calculation we could do the same thing down here as well and by the way
I have these comments here as to how to calculate it so if you are following this tutorial you can
also download the worksheet and follow it on your own now down here we want to calculate all the
expenses for january so we click here on the equal sign some like we learned earlier open parentheses
select the whole range enter and it's done now we need to calculate it for the other months as
well so is there a shorter way of doing it and the answer to that is yes you can use what's
called the autofill feature the autofill feature instead of you having to go through each one of
those cells what you can do is you can copy and replicate that same formula so this is our formula
we can replicate all the cells following downward or all the cell's going from left to right so how
do you do that all you have to do is you just click on the cell reference here and then hold
the mouse on the bottom right here when it changes to a little plus sign and then just drag it down
and notice it has performed the calculation one thing to keep in mind here is that double check
whether those references are correct for example here for 88 is it calculating the right stuff here
this also works from left to right and notice this is our formula and we can drag it to the
right by when it changes on the bottom right to a little plus sign drag it to the right and it's
going to give us the totals now this what it's doing it's taking from c6 through C 14 then you
go to the next one d6 to D 14 is 6 3 14 and so on so it's going it's seeing incrementally from
one point to the other to the other and this works the same way for anything in sequence so
for example you have Monday you drag this down it fills the days of the week anything like January
and it proceeds the same way the other thing that you could use this for is for numbers for example
now for numbers you either have to hold down the control key to do it automatically or you
can click right here in the bottom and choose to fill the series it's going to just keep on
moving them and there it is so control button or fill series for numbers you can also do things
that are in a certain sequence of other sorts for example let's say so let's say you want to have
anything in a certain sequence we're going to 5 0 5 10 15 and so on so you select your pattern that
you have and then you drag it down and now this is building this automatically for you so that's how
you use the autofill feature now the next thing another function here is the maximum the maximum
is determining based on these values we want to determine which one was the highest number in this
column so you can do this with a formula in Excel you can click on formulas here and you can see all
these different groups of formulas or functions after the functions and then you can see here
under all these are all the different functions now what we could do here is we could just choose
we want to find the maximum so if we start typing max here or you could have type maximum notice
it comes up with a bunch of suggestions so notice here max it returns the largest value in a series
or a set of values so you have a set of them here it's going to give you the highest one now
to learn how to do it you can also click on help on this function and it will go on the web and
it will give you examples descriptions examples and all kinds of other information about any of
those how to do it and so on so keep that in mind that that's how you learn about other formulas
will not be able to go through every single one of them now here we want to insert to find the
highest number so we do the equal sign max you can double click on it and then you select the
range that you want to find the highest number so you select the range here we don't want the total
of course hit enter and the highest number is 500 if I change this to that notice these all these
calculations will be updated automatically now if I wanted to get the highest number for the other
columns as well I could use the autofill feature that we covered earlier just simply drag this to
the right and then we are all set the next one is we want to find the lowest number so we are
finding the minimum we do the equal sign mi n open parenthesis and then select the range for
your calculation hit enter and now there is the minimum use the autofill feature and we are set
then we want to find the average the average you can either do equal sign average or don't forget
as well we have this stuff up here under the Home tab now this is also this drop down here under to
find the average now notice it's going to pick the wrong sequence of numbers here so we want to
select here the right range and then hit enter and that's why I like it to do this manually use the
autofill and there it is now you can also count how many values are in here in this range so you
can do equal sign count and then open parenthesis and then hit enter so there are nine rows in here
and then in this one there are only eight notice one of them is playing okay so so far we learned
how to add some of those tools how to format these numbers into currency and also we learned how to
find the total the sum for a bunch of numbers we learned maximum minimum average and count
here is another example that you could explore for yourself to tinker with those on your own as well
you