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The Work Surface

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About this lesson

Recognize the main terms used to describe Excel’s work canvas. 

Exercise files

Download this lesson’s exercise file.

The Work Surface.xlsx
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Quick reference

Topic

Application Terminology – The Work Surface.

When to use

Use to understand the main terms used to describe Excel’s work canvas.

Instructions

Reading the Grid

  • Excel’s grid is broken into columns (lettered across the top of the grid) and rows (numbered down the left side of the grid)
  • Cells are referred to by the coordinates, always citing the column first, then the row (i.e. A1, B10, D15)

The Name Box

  • Located above the upper left of the grid, but below the Ribbon
  • This box returns the address (coordinates) of the top left selected cell
  • Entering a cell address in this box and pressing Enter will take you there
  • If you have named objects in your workbook (like tables), selecting the name from this list will select the object

Worksheet Tabs

  • Located in the bottom left corner of the interface
  • Allows you to select different worksheets in the workbook

Formula Bar

  • Located above the grid, right of the Name box and below the Ribbon
  • Shows you the true contents of the top left selected cell (i.e. formulas instead of the value that shows in the grid itself)
  • Can be used to edit cell contents

Scroll Bars

  • Located on the right edge (vertical) and bottom right corner (horizontal)
  • These bars allow you to move the focus of the worksheet to other areas

Zoom Slider

  • Located in the bottom right corner of the application
  • Allows you to zoom in or out of the worksheet, making it appear larger or smaller

Quick Info Area

  • Located in the bottom right corner, to the left of the Zoom Slider
  • Takes effect when multiple cells are selected
  • Provides quick information like SUMs and AVERAGEs of selected values
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  • 00:04 In the last video, we looked at the ribbon,
  • 00:07 which is the big user interface that allows us to get access to our commands.
  • 00:11 In this one, what I'd like to focus on is the part where we actually get work done,
  • 00:15 which is the worksheet grid you can see here.
  • 00:17 You'll notice that the grid has column headers that go across the top, A, B,
  • 00:22 C, D, E.
  • 00:22 And it has row numbers down the left-hand side.
  • 00:25 So, when we refer to cells in Excel, if I were to go and select this
  • 00:29 cell right here, we always refer to the column first and then the row.
  • 00:34 So this would be cell F4 and cell H7.
  • 00:38 You can see that as we select them, it shades the columns and
  • 00:41 the rows just slightly to help us identify where we are.
  • 00:45 In addition to this, we can also see that the address for
  • 00:49 the cell that we've selected or the top left-hand side of the selection if we've
  • 00:54 selected multiple cells, actually shows in what we call the name box over here.
  • 00:59 It uses the exact same syntax or format to actually refer to it,
  • 01:04 so cell H7, in this particular case, or E3.
  • 01:08 Now, I can use this box that returns these address coordinates to actually
  • 01:13 go to any cell in the worksheet if I happen to know where I wanna go.
  • 01:17 So let's say that I wanted to go to, for example, cell N5,
  • 01:21 I could type that in and hit Enter.
  • 01:24 And it would take me all the way over there.
  • 01:26 Or if I wanted to go to cell, let's say, how about AA15.
  • 01:32 It would take me all the way over into that particular area as well.
  • 01:37 Again, pressing or going back to A1 will always be the top left cell of
  • 01:41 any worksheet, so it would take me right back into the home area.
  • 01:45 In addition to this, if you have named objects in your worksheets, and
  • 01:48 we'll talk more about tables later, but this is a table here, and
  • 01:52 a table actually has a name.
  • 01:53 So if I were to click somewhere else and then go back to this name box and
  • 01:57 click here, it'll tell me, hey, would you like to select Table1,
  • 02:01 which will allow me to grab that section of cells.
  • 02:03 So, that's kind of a nice little feature here.
  • 02:06 Now there's lots of other named objects,
  • 02:08 we'll get to those later on as we go through the different courses.
  • 02:12 Down the bottom, we have Worksheet tabs.
  • 02:14 You can see we have Sheet One and a little plus icon.
  • 02:17 I could create a new worksheet, this will give me Sheet Two.
  • 02:19 So I can now move back and
  • 02:21 forth by clicking on them to get to the different work sheets.
  • 02:24 So, we have lots of worksheets in a workbook, okay?
  • 02:26 So this will allow you to select different ones.
  • 02:30 Up above the worksheet grid and immediately below the ribbon beside
  • 02:34 the name box over here, we have what we call the Formula bar.
  • 02:38 And what the Formula bar does is,
  • 02:40 it allows us to actually see the true contents of a cell.
  • 02:43 So if I were to go and say, click on this particular cell,
  • 02:46 it will show me that what is truly there is 56.
  • 02:49 If I go and select on cell B11, though,
  • 02:51 even though it shows 278 in the worksheet grid, it'll show me in
  • 02:55 here that I actually have a real formula, okay, so something different here.
  • 03:00 We can use the Formula bar when we click on a cell to actually go back and
  • 03:03 make edits as well.
  • 03:04 So I could change this quantity to 57 and hit Enter, and
  • 03:08 it will now show up in the worksheet grid with a new value.
  • 03:12 Now if we mouse over the right or the bottom,
  • 03:15 we'll also have scroll bars pop into view, and we can left-click and
  • 03:18 drag those to move around our worksheet to both up and down or horizontally as well.
  • 03:25 One word of advice on this, I do find that if you go into your System Preferences,
  • 03:30 if you set your scroll bars to Always Show, they don't seem to work very well.
  • 03:34 You get a little shadow of them.
  • 03:35 That's always there.
  • 03:36 But they only come into view when you scroll off the screen,
  • 03:39 which is kinda difficult to trigger unless you're already scrolling using a mouse
  • 03:42 wheel or something like that.
  • 03:44 So I would prefer to leave them at this point in time so
  • 03:47 they only pop up when they're actually needed.
  • 03:50 Now, we also have down in the bottom right-hand corner here,
  • 03:54 this is the zoom slider.
  • 03:55 So we can use the little buttons to increase or decrease the zoom,
  • 03:59 zoom in or out.
  • 04:00 We can also drag the little slider to move into different areas as well to change
  • 04:05 the magnification.
  • 04:07 The last area that I wanna show you is the Quick Information section or
  • 04:10 Quick Information area, rather.
  • 04:13 This gives us a little bit of quick info about the cells that we've selected.
  • 04:16 You can see I've got an average and a count and a sum here for
  • 04:19 the cells that I'd actually selected in the worksheet.
  • 04:21 And I'm, of course, just doing those by left-clicking on the first cell and
  • 04:24 dragging down.
  • 04:25 If I were to grab text, it's gonna tell me that it's gonna count them cuz it
  • 04:29 obviously can't do math on our text.
  • 04:31 But when we actually go and grab any numeric fields, it'll try and
  • 04:34 give me a quick little bit of stats about it so that maybe if I just need
  • 04:37 to sum something up quickly, I don't have to go and write a formula to do that.
  • 04:41 So that's the Excel worksheet grid and the rest of the user interface that
  • 04:45 we'll be using as we go through and work through the next few videos.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

The Ribbon
04m:36s
Navigation
04m:23s
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