COSC1702 Computer

Applications II
Introduction to Excel - File Operations and Views
What is the class?
“This course is designed to teach the student to effectively use spreadsheet
software. It will focus on more advanced features of Microsoft Excel - including
PivotTables and PivotCharts, advanced formulas and functions, database
management, financial functions and what-if analyses, date and time arithmetic,
external data usage, report generation; and built-in graphics support. Students will
gain sufficient knowledge to become sophisticated users of Microsoft Excel.”

TL;DR: learn how to use Excel well

What is the class?
“This course is designed to teach the student to effectively use spreadsheet
software. It will focus on more advanced features of Microsoft Excel - including
PivotTables and PivotCharts, advanced formulas and functions, database
management, financial functions and what-if analyses, date and time arithmetic,
external data usage, report generation; and built-in graphics support. Students will
gain sufficient knowledge to become sophisticated users of Microsoft Excel.”

TL;DR: learn how to use E̶x̶c̶e̶l̶ Spreadsheets well

The one slide history of spreadsheets
Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. Accountants would literally write by hand
values and tabulate them up, performing the calculations manually. Transforming these analog worksheets into digital worksheets with
the wideset adoption of the personal computer enabled enabled features such as complex calculations, formulas, functions, and
statistical operations. Although originally brought into existence to replace their paper counterparts for accounting purposes, digital
spreadsheets are now widely used wherever data being sorted into a tabular fashion makes sense.
Excel is not the only Spreadsheet software
So then why are you teaching this class using excel?

● (arguably) most popular spreadsheet software in the world

● Skills learned are very transferrable
● Lots of documentation exists
What is a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet can be thought of as a computerized ledger which is divided into
rows and columns and provides built-in data processing capabilities. Columns are
identified with alphabetic headings (A, B, C, etc…), and rows are identified with
numeric headings (1, 2, 3, etc…).

The intersection of a row and a column is called a cell

Did someone say tuple?
You may occasionally hear people use the terms “tuple” “attribute” and “relation”
when referring to a row, column or table.

THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING!

These words are reserved in computer science specifically when referring to

database tables, not spreadsheets. Please do not use these terms
interchangeably as a spreadsheet is NOT a database
Your first Excel Document
An Excel document is called a workbook. A workbook contains one or more
worksheets. Each worksheet is a spreadsheet, which is a collection of cells, each
with a unique row-column address. Individual worksheets within a workbook are
accessible through tabs located along the bottom of the current worksheet
The XLSX format
The set of worksheets which make up one workbook are saved on the hard disk in
a single file whose name has the extension “.xlsx”. This enables us (and Windows)
to distinguish an Excel workbook file from a Word document file (which has the file
extension “.docx”).
Protip: showing file extensions in Windows 10
Someone somewhere thought hiding file extensions by default in windows was a
good idea. To fix that:

<-Uncheck that box

The Microsoft Office Suite Common User Interface
Microsoft Excel uses the Common User Interface (CUI) with other Microsoft Office
applications, meaning menus, toolbars and shortcuts are similar to other Office
applications such as Word and PowerPoint.

Being familiar with one Office application makes it easy to pick up the others.
Review of the workbook and worksheet parts
Review of the workbook and worksheet parts (cont.)
The Excel “ribbon” menu
The Ribbons
The Ribbons typically sit along the top of the Excel Application Window. Each tab
represents a different ribbon, each containing a collection of features, tools, and
commands which are sub-categorized into groups. The most common ribbons
found in mostworkbooks include:

a) Home Ribbon – includes the most commonly used icons such as those
controlling formatting, adding/deleting columns and rows, editing content and
finding things.

b) Insert Ribbon – used to add Pivot Tables and Charts, pictures, charts, and
shapes to the workbook.
The Ribbons (cont)
c) Page Layout Ribbon – provides controls relating to layout of the worksheet
when printing or publishing it such as orientation, margins, scaling as well as
themes

d) Formula Ribbon – in addition to providing access to all the functions included in

Excel, this ribbon provides access to controls relating to naming ranges and
auditing tools.

e) Data Ribbon – tools for sorting, filtering, subtotaling, analyzing and importing
external data are found here

f) Review Ribbon – spell checking, translation, comment management, and review

tools are some of the features located on the Review ribbon.
The Ribbons (cont)

g) View Ribbon – options to customize the presentation of the workbook in the

Excel Window are found here including views, freezing parts of the workbook, and
managing multiple open workbooks.
Customizing Ribbons
The Quick Access Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is a feature found in each of the MS Office
programs and can be customized to suit the needs of each program. It is a very
useful tool in that it provides quick access to the most commonly used features
without the need to change ribbons
Workbook Properties
Saving a Workbook
There are three ways to save a file in Excel: using the Save icon on the Quick
Access Toolbar, selecting Save on the File menu, and using the keyboard
shortcut, Control + S.

● Saving the Workbook the First Time

● Saving the Workbook After It has been Named
● Saving the Workbook with a Different File Format
● Saving Files to Remote Locations
Backstage view
Excel Options
The Share Panel