Sean has just started a new job where he's going to be working with Excel quite
a lot and he's feeling a bit nervous.
Let's help Sean take charge of Excel.
I have just opened Excel 2016, if you are working with an older version,
you may find some things look a bit different but
they mostly work the same, so don't worry.
In 2016, you will come to this screen where you can chose to open a file you
have been working recently or got to a blank workbook.
We're going to click Blank Workbook.
And here we are, welcome to Excel.
Let's start by getting familiar with where things are and what they're called.
To begin with, we have a large toolbar at the top of our screen.
This is called the ribbon, and it contains nearly all the tools we're going to need.
There were so many though, that they couldn't fit them all into one stretch.
So we're on the Home tab of the ribbon, but you'll notice there's also an Insert
tab that has tools for inserting things like pictures and charts.
Or there's a Data tab which gives us tools for working with data, like sorting and
filtering.
As we go through the course, you'll become more familiar with the tabs and
the tools on them.
Coming back to the Home tab though, I'd like you to notice that the tools haven't
been scattered randomly across the ribbon, they've been logically grouped.
So for example, this group is called my Font group and
it contains all the tools that I need to change my text.
At the bottom right hand corner of some of the groups,
you'll find what's called a small dialog launcher.
If you single click on that, it opens up your additional options.
We won't need these very often, but it's nice to know they're there.
I'm going to click Cancel to close.
One tab on the ribbon that is a little bit special, is the File tab.
When we click on the File tab it brings us to the Backstage View.
And this contains all the tools we need for managing our file,
like Open, Save, or Close.
To come out of the backstage view, click on the back arrow or
press the escape key on your keyboard.
Now we'd like to use our backstage view to open our first file.
So I'm going to click file and make sure you've come to Open.
If you have worked with the file recently, it will appear in your recents list.
Otherwise, you will need to click the Browse button.
If you haven't already, please make sure you've downloaded the file you need for
this practice video.
Then navigate to it.
Mine is in the Documents folder, and I've put in Excel Essentials.
The file we need is W01 V01 take charge.
And I'm going to double-click to open it.
We now have something to look at.
The ribbon does take up quite a lot of space, and so
we have the option to collapse it by double-clicking on any of the Tabs.
That does free up space, but
it can be a bit alarming when your ribbon suddenly vanishes.
If that happens by mistake, don't panic,
to get it back just double click on any of the ribbon tabs and we're back.
Now just above the ribbon, you will notice another toolbar.
This little guy is called our quick access toolbar, and
it has my two favorite commands, save and undo.
It also has the redo, but even more importantly we can change
this quick access toolbar to contain the tools that we need.
If I come to the drop down arrow and click, it gives me some favorites.
There's some really great stuff here, I'm going to click on the Sort Ascending.
Now if I need to quickly sort my data by city,
I can click into city, click A to Z, and my data's resorted.
What about all the other tools that aren't on our drop down?
Well they can be added too.
So for example, I'm going to click on my Review tab, and
come to my Spelling and my Proofing group.
Now this time I'm going to right-click, and then click,
Add to Quick Access Toolbar, and there it is.
So absolutely any tool in your ribbon can be added to the quick access by
right-clicking.
Customize this toolbar to speed up your workflow.
Just under the ribbon, you will see another bar called the Formula Bar.
This bar allows you to see what data is in a cell, and also edit the data.
Now let's come down to the main section of our worksheet.
When you open an Excel file it is typically called a workbook.
And a workbook will contain at least one worksheet.
Inside a worksheet you will notice it is divided into columns and rows.
At the intersection of each of these is a square which we call a cell.
I'm going to click on the cell and
you see it gets a solid border telling me that this is the active cel.
Each cell also has a unique identifier made up of
it's column letter and row number.
So I am clicked on D2, if I click into this cell, I'm now in C1.
Last quick thing, at the bottom of your workbook is another small bar
called your status bar, it's gray in 2016 but may appear green in other versions.
If I were to select some numeric data, you will notice my status
bar gives me the average, count and sum of those values.
So the status bar can be used to see what's happening in your workbook and
also modify some of the views.
We will look at how to use it more in the next video.
The last thing we want to do now is close our workbook.
To do this I'm going to click File and Close.
Excel will check if I want to save first,
if you want to keep your changes press save, if not don't save.
Now it's your chance.
Have a go clicking around the ribbon and trying out the different tools.
Be brave.
You can't break Excel.