Welcome to Excel Basics Video Number Eight.
Hey, in this video we got to talk about default data
alignment in Excel and how it can help us.
Now, this is video Excel Basics Eight.
This is part of the larger video series, Office 2016.
And this is video number 20.
Now, if you want to download the Excel file or the PDF notes
to go along with this video, you can click on the link
below the video.
Now, before we talk about the default alignment for text
and numbers, I got to look up in the styles group
and I want to notice that Normal is highlighted
with that little gray box.
If I click on this style right here, it jumped to Check Cell.
That's a style I'd never use.
And when I click back over there, it jumps to Normal.
This one is the bad style.
This one is normal.
Now, that's important.
Because if we talk about default alignment,
that means no one's messed with the normal style.
Now, over in Word, we saw how to modify styles.
It's the same over here in Excel.
Now, I don't want to modify this.
But I want to go look what makes up normal style.
Right click Modify.
And notice, for number formatting, it's general.
For alignment, it's bottom aligned.
And there's a few other options here.
Now I'm to click Cancel.
That's important.
Because if you start looking through your spreadsheet
and you click on a cell and the style changed--
or I want you to notice, when I click in a default cell,
there is alignment.
But that's part of that normal style,
and so is the general number formatting.
If I come over click in cell G7, oh, no, the dreaded text number
formatting.
If I click in cell F7, oh, no.
Someone altered the alignment.
Now, let's learn why that's important.
Let's enter into this area over here.
Each type of the data that we can enter in Excel,
I'm just going to type a word, Excel and Enter, Enter.
Notice the default alignment for text is always to the left.
Now, if I enter a number, 43, Enter, Enter, oh, look at that.
The default alignment for a number is always to the right.
Now, most of the time we're entering
text or words or numbers.
But once in a while, even in this class,
we'll see that we have to enter in trues and falses.
But watch what happens when I type false.
Oh, trues and falses always are capitalized and centered.
True, same thing.
That's the default alignment.
Another thing we might see in Excel is an error.
Equals 10 divided by zero.
Now, we know from math that's undefined.
But in Excel, if I enter that, it says uh-oh,
you divided by zero.
That's the error you get.
It's always going to be capitalized and centered.
Now, that's kind of silly.
Look at that.
I put empty cells are empty.
Actually, the reason I did that is, in Excel,
the different types of data you will see
are text, numbers, trues, falses, errors, and, of course,
empty cells.
Now, errors, I have a list of errors here.
These are also in the PDF notes.
Throughout the class, we'll get to see some of those errors.
Now, I want to see why knowing this default alignment
is so important.
Let's come over to cell D7.
And I'm going to take the number 175 cents, Enter.
As soon as you enter a number and you
see that it's aligned to the left,
you know you're in trouble.
Now, I can clearly see what happened.
I put in two decimals.
Excel doesn't think this is a number.
Now, I can simply backspace and Enter.
And now Excel understands it's a number.
And our visual cue is back.
Right means number.
Now I'm going to Control Z just to leave that as a trail.
That's a visual cue that the number we tried to enter
didn't work.
Excel thinks it's text.
So, of, course when we enter $100.75,
it aligns to the right.
Now, dates and times are actually numbers in Excel.
And if we enter a date like 12/2/2017, when I hit Enter,
it better be aligned to the right
because dates and times are numbers.
Here's the problem.
And this happens to me all the time.
I'm not paying attention, I type 14/2/2017.
The problem is there's not 14 months in the year
and Excel knows that.
That's our visual cue that we entered the day incorrectly.
Now, you can totally fix it.
Just backspace, two, and Enter.
And now, aligned to the right, Excel
thinks it's a proper date.
Now I'm going to Control Z and leave that.
The one that I always do is 12/2/2017 and Enter.
But that is polite.
Your visual cue is the default alignment for text.
Excel doesn't think that's a proper date.
Here's another one.
I'm going to come over here and type
a name, Sue, Enter, Tyrone, Enter.
Immediately I know something strange
is going on here because text is always supposed
to be aligned to the left.
Right here, what's going on?
Well if you look up in alignment,
sometimes you have to hunt around to see what's going on.
Look at that.
Someone did right align.
Now, if you're entering data, numbers, those kind of things,
you want to leave the default setting
so we have our visual cues.
And that's especially true in our data sets.
Like the last couple of videos we did,
some ifs functions and pivot tables
don't change the alignment or do some crazy things
with text number formatting.
Leave the default alignment.
Now, here's our last example.
Uh-oh, we already know we're in trouble.
Numbers are not supposed to be aligned to the left.
And if we come down to the bottom
and use our keyboard for the sum function, Alt equals, well,
you already know there's trouble because the sum function did
not guess.
Usually it highlights the numbers for us.
But no problem.
I'm going to highlight these.
And when I hit Enter, watch what the sum function does.
Sum function is totally programmed
to ignore text numbers.
Now, all we're seeing here in each one of these examples,
typing in numbers, typing in dates, typing in text,
or getting a spreadsheet with numbers like this,
our default alignment is our visual cue
that something strange is going on.
And throughout the class, we'll see
lots of examples of how default alignment will help us.
All right, that was a bunch of fun
with default alignment in Excel.
This is Excel Basics Eight.
And for Excel Basics Six to Eight,
now you can go to the sheet, after the sheet homework
and do your homework problems.
There's one, two.
There's actually a third sheet right there.
Now, to navigate to the sheets, you
can use these arrows which click to expose more sheets.
I can click the other direction also to expose more sheets.
Notice, when I use the arrows, it doesn't actually
move the active sheet.
You can also come to the horizontal scroll bar.
And the vertical dot, dot, dot, you can actually click.
And with that cursor right there,
you can click and drag to reduce the size
of the horizontal scroll bar, thus seeing more sheets.
So there you go, three homework sheets.
And, of course, the blue ones have the yellow instructions
at the top.
And the red ones, you can click on them.
But only click over after you've completed your homework.
The red sheets are always the answers.
All right, that was a lot of fun with default alignment.
If you like this video, be sure to click that thumbs up,
leave a comment, and sub, because there is always
lots more videos to come from Excel that's fun.
And in our next Excel Basics, Number Nine,
we'll talk about number formatting as facade
and we'll see the round function for the first time.
All right, we'll see you next video.