ADVANCED EXCEL

Exercise 16
These notes cover the following skills:

 Revision of Foundation and intermediate Level skills

 Using absolute cell referencing
 Applying conditional formatting
 Using nested IF statements
 Using the LOOKUP function and combo boxes

The exercise will focus on the development of a grade book which has relevance for all teachers. The advanced training
is an opportunity for you to apply skills relevant to your own school/classroom.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Click on the file menu, then choose options, click customized ribbons. Under the customized ribbon category click
on the DEVELOPER then click OK.
2. Make sure to format each column to the appropriate category e.g. name should be formatted as “Text”, telephone
numbers should be formatted as “Text” to allow you enter a zero before each number, the percentage column as
“Percentage” etc. The spreadsheet you are developing below will allow the teacher to keep track of two tests (A
and B) and automatically calculate the percentage and the grade (Distinction, Merit, Pass or Fail).
3. Three things you need to format once you have entered the data as above:

a. Set the title of the grade book to bold and font size 14 (Arial).
b. Merge cells D6 to F6 and label as “Test A” and colour cell green
c. Merge cells G6 to I6 and label as “Test B” and colour cell orange.
d. Draw border as shown in the screenshot (click on Format and then Border and Shading)

4. Now enter the marks for both test A and text B which each student achieved as shown in the screen shot below.
5. To calculate the percentage, you need to divide each raw mark by the total marks for each text and work out the
percentage. In the previous training sessions, you learnt how to enter formulas in a cell and replicate that to
other cells in a column. This time we will use absolute referencing in which the exact address of a cell, regardless
of the position of the cell that contains the formula is maintained. An absolute cell reference takes the form
$A$1. You will soon understand the advantage of using absolute references.

6. Create another table as shown below which will hold the total marks for test A and Test B

7.
Now you have to set up the formulas in both the percentage columns to automatically calculate the total
percentage.

In cells E8 enter the following formula = D8/$B$17 (make sure that you format the column E to percentage
category. Set the number of decimal places to 0). Notice the use of dollar sign in the formula which denotes an
absolute reference to cell B17. Now replicate the formula to cover the range E8-E14. Repeat to calculate the
percentage for Test B (column I). At the end of this step, you should have a worksheet which looks like fig 4.
8. Now you want to automatically work out what the grade each student has obtained based on the percentage.
First, you need to set up another table with the grade boundaries for each test as shown in Fig. 5. Both test A
and B have different grade boundaries which will determine whether a student achieves a final grade of
distinction, merit, pass or fail.

9. In both the foundation and intermediate training, you used the IF function. The IF function tests the value in a cell
and does one thing if the test is true and another if the test is false. We will test each percentage against the grade
boundary and working out the grade. For example, for test A, if the percentage is greater than 70%, then the student
gets a distinction. Unlike the basic IF function which tests two conditions; we have to test each condition against
the three grade boundaries. Hence for this you will learn how to use what is referred to as a nested IF statement.

This is the logic. If E8 > B19, grade is distinction; if E8 > B20, grade is merit; IF E8 > B21, grade is pass; if E8
< B21, grade is fail. To construct a formulas, you will use a nested IF statement and absolute referencing.

Enter the following formula in cell F8

=IF(E8>$B$19,"Distinction",IF(E8>$B$20,"Merit",IF(E8>$B$21,"Pass","Fail")))
 Once entered, you worksheet should worksheet should look like the one below (Fig. 6)

Now see if you work out what the formula you need to enter in cell I8 to calculate the grades for Test B.

10. The use of colour coding in marks book is a good visual aid to see the performance of the whole class and give a
snapshot impression of progress made. You can use conditional formatting to make cells stand out if they meet
certain criteria. For example, you may want to colour all distinction grades as green and all fail grades as red.

To achieve this, highlight all the cells to which you want to apply conditional formatting in one block by dragging
across cells F8 to F14 as shown below

11. Next click on Format and Conditional Formatting. Choose equal to from the drop-down list and set the value to
Distinction as shown
12. Click on Format and click on the pattern tab to set the Cell shading to green, To set a second conditional
format, repeat, click in Add and choose equal to from the drop-down list and set the value to Fail

13. Now set the conditional formatting for Test B as done for Test A. Your final worksheet should appear as below
14. Lets revisit and see the advantage of absolute referencing and setting up a separate table for grade boundaries.
Lets say that you as a teacher decided to change the grades boundaries for both Text A and B. It’s simple as all
you have to do is change the values in the Grades boundaries table. All the rest is automatically generated.
Change the grades boundaries and to the values as below and you should get a worksheet similar to the one shown
below, ). Notice the change in colour of grades as defined by conditional formatting.

15. Now its time to do something really exciting with the grade book you have created. You want to set up another
worksheet and create a user friendly interface to retrieve information from the grade book you have just created.
First, click on the sheet 2 of your Excel Workbook and enter data as shown below
16. The next step is to create a Combo box to select a name of a student whose details you want to bring up in the
page. For this, click on Developer tab. Select a Combo box from the Forms toolbar and draw a Combo box
17. Right click on the Combo box and click on Format and Control tab to see a window as shown

18. In the Input Range Box enter the range of the table (on sheet 1) which contains all the names. However, note that
you are entering the range in worksheet 2 but linking to the table on worksheet 1 hence the notation as below.

Sheet1!$B$8:$I$14 (Sheet1! Identifies the link and $B$8:$I$14 is the range with absolute referencing).

Next, choose a cell link which will be used to provide a link between the worksheet 1 and information to be
retrieved into the form created in worksheet 2.

In cell link, enter $E$4 and click on OK

19. Once this is completed, you should be able to click on the Combo box and see the list of all the names of the
students. Notice that when a name is selected, a cell link value appears in cells E4 which corresponds to the
student number (the left most column of the table).
20. Once a name has been selected from the drop down list, you want the grades for Test A, Test B and telephone details
to automatically appear. To do this, you will use an Excel lookup function called VLOOKUP. This function is used to
retrieve information stored in a table and when the desired value is stored elsewhere on the workbook.

The VLOOKUP has the following arguments:

VLOOKUP (lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num)

lookup_value: The value to be found in a column which in this example is in cell E4

table_array: The table of information in which the data is looked up.
col_index_num: the numeric position of the column that is being searched.

Enter the VLOOKUP function in cell C6 as follows: =VLOOKUP(E4,Sheet1!A8:I14,6).

Enter the VLOOKUP function in cell C8 as follows: =VLOOKUP(E4,Sheet1!A8:I14,9)

Enter the VLOOKUP function in cell C10 as follows: =VLOOKUP(E4,Sheet1!A8:I14,3)

When you choose Fazal as the student whose details you want brought up, the following information should appear as
shown below
21. Formatting the final screen. Insert a colour for the complete worksheet by selecting a part of worksheet and
choosing a colour.

22. Next you want to make the cell link value in E4 invisible. You can do this by making it the same colour as the
background. Add an image to the page to enhance the design by clicking on Insert and picture from file.
ADVANCED EXCEL
Exercise 17
Instructions:
1. Open Review exercise 4 “ the payroll exercise” and do the same with
Exercise 16 instructions the final output should be as shown below:
ADVANCED EXCEL
Exercise 18
Instructions:
1. Open Review exercise 2 “ the Monthly Commission” and do the same with
Exercise 16 instructions the final output should be as shown below: