Finding Your Way Around a Workbook

What a spreadsheet is for

A spreadsheet is a grid that stores data and calculates with it. Businesses use spreadsheets to track sales, plan budgets, list stock, record hours worked and prepare reports. The same ideas work in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc. Menu names differ a little between them, but cells, formulas and functions behave in the same way.

In this course you start with the basics, then move to functions, sorting and filtering, lookups and pivot tables, and finally to building models that other people can trust.

The parts of the screen

The name box, at the top left, shows the address of the selected cell. You can also type an address there and press Enter to jump to it. The formula bar, next to it, shows what is really inside the cell. This matters: a cell may show 250, but the formula bar may show =B2*C2. What you see in the cell is the result; the formula bar shows how it was made.

Example

A shop lists products in column A, prices in column B and quantities sold in column C. Cell D2 shows 45. Click it, and the formula bar shows =B2*C2. The 45 is calculated from the price and the quantity, so it will change if either one changes.