Hello and welcome to our course on Excel 2013.
My name is Toby and I’m your instructor on this course.
Excel 2013 is the latest version of Microsoft’s Excel product and Excel is the world’s most
popular spreadsheet product.
It’s used on PC’s, on Macs, and soon on various other devices and literally millions
of people around the world use Excel every day not only for things like personal finances,
but also it’s used in big business.
And it’s very important in areas of business such as finance.
First of all, I’d like to talk about who this course is for.
If you haven’t used a spreadsheet product before and in particular if you haven’t
used Microsoft Excel before, this course is for you.
I’m going to be going right from the basics of Excel and hopefully I’ll be explaining
it in enough detail that you can get up to speed pretty quickly.
I will be assuming that you have a reasonable knowledge of using a Windows-based operating
system.
So I won’t be explaining terms like what a mouse is and what a click is and so on;
and scrollers and scroll bars and dialogs.
I’m assuming that standard Windows terminology and Windows usage you’re familiar with.
But I won’t be assuming anything about knowledge of how spreadsheets work and how to use a
spreadsheet program.
If you’ve used Microsoft Excel before in an earlier version then what I’m going to
do at various points is to point out in certain sections that maybe there’s a part you can
skip or maybe there’s a part you could go through quickly because there’s no significant
change in this new version.
Having said that, if the version of Excel you’re used to is older than the 2007 version,
so if you’ve been using Excel 2000, for example, or Excel 2003, then this version
is so different that you probably need to go through the whole thing.
You won’t be used to the Ribbon interface, whereas people with a newer version, 2010,
2007 version, will be familiar with the Ribbon interface.
Although to be fair, there are some significant changes in the Ribbon in this version as we’ll
see a little bit later on.
So if you’re familiar with Excel, a version 2007 or newer, then there will be a few parts
that you can skip or go through quickly.
If you’re used to an older version or you’re completely new to Excel, I suggest you sit
back and enjoy the whole course.
The next thing I’d like to talk about is the sort of device that you’re using to
run Excel 2013.
The device that I’m recording this on is a conventional PC in a way, but it also has
a touch screen and I can use gestures, hand gestures, in front of the screen.
Now in the course, mainly, I’m going to be using keyboard and mouse because that is
still the way that most people use Microsoft Excel.
I will be using touch screen once or twice just to demonstrate what any of the differences
are and I’ll cover touch screen in general a little bit later on.
It’s important to recognize that some of the changes in Excel 2013 are in fact intended
to accommodate people that use touch screens.
So it’s quite an important factor.
But I won’t be using touch screen extensively.
If you are using touch screen to use Excel, then I hope that I’ll cover enough material
that you can proceed with confidence using the touch screen facilities of your PC, laptop,
tablet, or whatever sort of device you’re using.
The next thing to look at is what operating systems you can run Excel 2013 on.
Excel 2013 is part of Office 2013 and to run Office 2013 the Microsoft Website gives you
a list of the operating systems you can use.
These include the main two desktop systems which are Windows 7 and Windows 8.
So if you’ve got either Windows 7 or Windows 8, then you’re fine with Office 2013 and
therefore Excel 2013.
It will also run on the more recent Windows Server products, 2008 release to R2 and Windows
Server 2012.
If you have an older version of Windows such as Vista or XP, then Office 2013 is not supported
on those products.
So if you’re thinking of converting to Excel 2013, I’m afraid you’re going to need
to convert your operating system as well if it’s older than Windows 7 on a PC.
Now at the time of recording this, there is also talk about which version of Office 2013
or should I say how much of Office 2013 will be available on tablets and particularly on
the Microsoft surface tablet.
It looks as though there will be a pretty complete version of Office 2013 available
and it will be able to run on the surface tablet.
But at the time of recording this is not certain.
There’s no pricing and there’s no actual specification released by Microsoft for this.
So maybe by the time you’re watching this it’s something you can look out for.
Whether it will run on any other device that you’ve got, if it’s not in a category
I’ve already mentioned, it’s something you’re going to have to check either via
the manufacturer of your device or via the Microsoft website.
The next thing to point out is that there are several versions of Office 2013, all of
which include Excel 2013 and here we can see we have Office Home and Student 2013, Office
Professional 2013, and Office Home and Business 2013.
Now there are others.
The version I’m using here is one that’s called Office Professional Plus 2013 which
has even more components in it.
And you can also see in the list there that there’s something called Office 365 which
is effectively the online version of a collection of these applications.
Now I’m going to talk about Office 365 a little bit later on.
For the moment my focus is going to be on Excel 2013.
But it’s worth knowing what the 365 version of Excel is like as well, and as I say I’ll
return to that later on.
So, you can see the versions that you can get plus some others and you know that you
have to be on Windows 7 or Windows 8.
Let’s talk about getting Excel 2013 installed and setup on your device.
Well the first thing to say is that you need a device which is up to the job of running
Office 2013.
If you’re running Windows 7 or Windows 8, then it’s very likely that your device is
up to that job anyway.
But if you search on Microsoft.com for Office 2013 requirements, you can see a full hardware
specification there, computer and processor 1 gigahertz, memory at least 1 gig of RAM,
etc.
2 gig for the 64 bit version of Office 2013, and then Hard Disk availability, browser versions,
and so on.
So you should really make sure that you tick all of the boxes before you install Office
2013 to start to use it.
Now what I’m not going to do is take you through how to install Office 2013.
The instructions you need are available from Microsoft.
If you bought a packaged version of Office 2013, perhaps from your local computer store
or mail order, then there will be the basic instructions you need included with that.
If you’re planning to use a preview version or if you’re downloading a version of Office
2013 from Microsoft, then the instructions for installation are accessible from the same
place where you download the preview or other version.
And I’m going to assume that from this point onwards in the course you have installed Office
2013 and it’s basically ready to use and that you’re going to be able to start Excel
2013.
So I’m assuming that you have Office 2013 and therefore Excel 2013 installed correctly
and ready to use.
The other assumption I’m going to make is that you have access to the exercise files
that come with this course.
You may well have them in a different folder to the one that I’ve got them and the list
you see may be slightly different from the list that I’m looking at here, but you’ll
see a list of files with names similar to these and we’re going to be referring to
these throughout the course.
What I’ve done is to put a shortcut to this folder on my desktop to make it easy for me
to find the exercise files.
So you should be ready now to start using Excel 2013.
Before we actually do, we’re going to have a short section on what’s new in Excel 2013.
This won’t necessarily mean much to you if you haven’t used Excel before.
But I think it’s worth just following me as I go through this because some of the terminology
and the overview of some of the changes may help you in the rest of the course.
So, I’ll see in that next section.