Basic Excel Skills [Eel may be the most versatile software program ever created. Is used daily by nallions of people in every caeivable walk of fie. Some ofits users are simply ‘ding up stortcokumns of numbers, wii others ae creating sophisticated apis tions in which Excel i perfoening complex merical esleulatons while interacting with several other software sytem. With such a versatile and fexble toc it {ical for any wero determine just which of the thousands offeaturesin Excel are really worth knowing In thie chapter, we describe the haic Excel skills we think ate [important for every busines nals "Ths chapter ist intended to seve a8 a beginners tutorial op Excel. Those ‘who are new toExcel and who need ttl should work througha book CD. or Take an oolineeoutee Severalof these ar itedin the sugaestedreadings Those who thave a working knowledge of Excel wil nd in tis chaper some reminders about familiar tos and perp pointers o some new one a well We have found that many experienced users have never taken thetine to expore Excel stematcally.s0| their silsare deep insome arearbat shallow in others Werecommead that you skim {his chapter fo Encl features that are new to you and ad them to your skillset. fevv minutes spent in lemning how to ure Feel more eficenly, oven ifyou area experienced user can pa dividends inthe future everytime you build a spreadsheet model Se ‘What spreadsheet sill ate prerequisites for an analyst who would like to learn to model nel? The mart tai sil sad oe tha dest show upintbe books, isthe Sty to leam by til anderrr Few suceasulusers of software lear primarily from manuals lp faites, Most ave learned to sean themonus and searchin party ‘idm, pry oteligent fashion forthe ool they need and Yo experiment freely. “knowing hat almost) pobing they cannot he undone. lnfac the Undo command iscome of te most important features in Excel! “Getting down to Excel, the rst necessary skills tbe able to vwonheet and between worksheet in mor bovk, Thi alesis ‘Srolling ing te Home en End kes, and soon. Even the novice modeler needsto fe textandentr date and choose the formatoftesc entries ishandy to beable ‘change the font name, sh, andsze:touse bald and ales andtocolor acelorits ‘Sontets The sly tothe content cll isimportant. Other nevessary skills inciadeinsering and deleting tos of columns aad entice woskshocts; cuting, opying, and pasting, print! aa drawing chars. ‘Skill ee of formulas a fonctions separates the aovcespreadshest us from the advanced ure. To crete formulas effectively, users most understand bath relative cll adresing a absolute cell addressing. Excl has iamumerable bul in| functions aa an rascal simplify exeuations. Some ofthe most useful are SOM,in Spaton TF, ox MEK AVERAGE, and NPV. The Insert Function window not ony fist al the avalable functions by category, but also species the syntax ofeach function, ‘explaining what inputs each requites and in what ordet. Beyond these hase tools, Excel contains erally hundreds of specialized features, Few modelers use more than several dozens ofthese soutincly, and even {ewercaaromemberal of them hetween uses, Its nor necessary to master lf See specialized tools in order to sueoed at modeling ‘Wevillusea simple spreadsheet model a an example throughout this chapter ‘The reader should ope thismodel and use ito test out the features described below "The spreadsheet set x shown in Figure 3. Pont investors in 9 ofce bulla consrstion project have ake ws to vane si ‘opportunity. Our task o pro he after ech ows eing Som soto ‘pera ths proposed oc bldg ver fn year povod Ata planned sto 8000 ‘Sue feet te expected contraction cont $8 pe quae fot, The investor pan fake ‘uta morgage for percent of he cost of he busing paying he einer cs). and {hey hve Bee arated arate of 1 poent fra er of 30 yea The owner math 1) forthe cow of operating te adn, Mic nls nes sre, enenance, and eran les They same ht the average opting sot pe gue fot wil be $10 “They hve ao ema tha they can hare a etal ae of 15 por agar oo, with an ‘oxcupang ato 70 percent. The cet ofeapalis 1 perent Renner are expected to grow poet pe yea, whe operating expense row 6 peo the oecpangy ae sop peeetae points yearly asthe bul ages Te owner pln sel the ug at the end the ith Year for 12 Une he fal ear ne operating ie 7 3.3_THE EXCEL WINDOW, Exch Exel le iscalled a workbook. A workbook consists of number of individual worksheets. We will se the word “sprendsbeet” to refer to bath workbooks and Wworksbets ‘The basic spreadsheet layout consists fa rid of rows and columns cll ee Figure 32). The rows are labeled with numbers andthe columns are labeled with letters The maximum number of rows in a single worksheet f I,M&S76 the ‘maximum number of columns is 16.388. The addess ofa cll correspond to ts column and row label—for example, C3 or ABSST, “etd tri chap rts dn Compu Si weet