PRACTICAL WORK 02 - SPREADSHEETS

PRACTICAL WORK 02 - SPREADSHEETS

Goals of this practical work: at the end of the practical class you will know

-to open and save files using Microsoft Excel -to perform basic operations with data: select, copy, move, delete -to perform computations using available data, using functions typed or chosen from menus -to create charts based on existing data -to automatically create data series using different MS Excel options and shortcuts

Introduction. Microsoft Excel

A spreadsheet or an electronic spreadsheet is a software for organizing and analysing data displayed as a table, where we can write both text and (especially) numbers. Spreadsheets developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting worksheets. Microsoft Excel, part of Microsoft Office, is a spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft for Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation and graphing tools, pivot tables and other advanced features; it also represents the "industry standard" for spreadsheets.

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Fig.1. Launghing MS Excel 2010

In this practical work you will learn to use the Microsoft Excel 2010 version of this spreadsheet program. To launch the application, press the START button, move the mouse cursor over the "All Programs" button and select "Microsoft Office" from the list that appears. In the list of shortcuts displayed under MS Office you will find Microsoft Excel 2010 - just click once on it, using the left mouse button and you will start the program. On some computers you can find shortcuts directly on the desktop or on the START menu.

At startup, the program will create and open a new file ("workbook"), containing three pages ("worksheets"); because of this, the window that appears will look like the following picture (Fig.2), having a structure similar to a table as the main element.

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Fig.2. Overview of MS Excel 2010 interface

Title bar Menu bar

Tool bar

Formula bar Column names

Cell Row numbers

Column Row

On the "View" menu you should check if the "Formula bar" is selected. This is an area containing two cells, a smaller one where the name of the current cell is displayed (the red circle on the picture above) and a larger one where the actual text that was written in the current cell is displayed (in case we input a formula, only the result will be displayed into the spreadsheet, while on the "Formula bar" we will see the text of the formula).

Saving and opening a file

In order not to accidentally lose data, you should often save the file you work on. To do this, please click on the "File" menu, then on the "Save" option. A window similar to the next one should appear, if you save the file for the first time. The same window shows up if you choose the "Save as..." option, when you want to rename or save in a different location the current file. If you press the "Save" button while working on a previously saved file, you will not be prompted again for a name or a location, only the information in the file will be updated.

To save the file, first please choose the following location: Computer DATA(D:) - ENG1, to save the file in. Write in the "File name" textbox the name you want to use (e.g."Table") and choose in the "Save as type" box the desired output format for your file and it's corresponding file extension. To finish, press the "Save" button, located on the the bottom-right corner of the window Save your file with the name "Table", keeping the file type automatically chosen by MS Excel - ".xlsx". After pressing the "Save" button, you will notice that on the title bar at the top of the MS Excel program window the new name of the file is written - "Table.xlsx".

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Fig.3.Dialogue windows for the "Save" and "Save As" options To open a file, choose the "Open..." option from the "File" menu, then browse the folders for the location where you know the file is stored. After selecting the desired file, press the "Open" button, located in the bottom-right part of the window. If you need to create another document, you can use the File menu, select New, then "Blank Workbook"

Data input

To start working with MS Excel, please type in the table the data displayed below:

This data represent the temperature measurements recorded every 4 hours for a patient, for a five days period of time.

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Basic operations with data ? Select, Copy, Move, Delete

To copy or move data on a spreadsheet, first you have to select that data. You can do this using the mouse - press the left button then drag the mouse cursor over the area where the desired cells are, thus creating a selection rectangle. The color of the selected cells will change, usually becoming blue. This way, an entire block of cells will be selected. You can also select a block of cells using the Shift key ? if you click on a cell, then Shift-click on another cell, the rectangular area that has those two cells as opposing corners will be selected. After you select the data, perform the desired command ? "Copy" for copying data or "Cut" for moving data. You can select those commands from the "Home" menu or from the pop-menu that appears when you right-click the selection (see picture below), or you can use the shortcuts, ? Ctrl+"C" for "Copy" and Ctrl+"X" for "Cut". The third step consists on selecting the first cell of the new location or the entire area where you want the data copied. To conclude the copying, perform the "Paste" command - choose it from the "Home" menu or the right-click menu or use the Ctrl+"V" shortcut. As an exercise, please copy the data on the first column of your table, from A1 to A7, to the right of the table, in a location starting from G1. Use the following pictures as a guide to complete this task.

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If you want to move data in Excel, you can to use the "Cut" and "Paste" commands, in a similar way as for copying. But you have another option, to drag the selected data to a new location, by placing the mouse cursor on the border of the selection rectangle (see below its shape when it touches the selection border), holding the left mouse button and dragging the data to the desired area. Please move the data you copied before, now located into the G1:G7 cells, to the next column to the right, starting from H1.

To complete the exercise, delete the data you just moved, located now into the H1:H7 cells. If you use the right-click menu and select "Delete", a new window will appear, asking how to replace the cells that will be removed from the worksheet. This will not happen if you press the "Delete" key on the keyboard, because that way you perform, in fact, the "Clear Contents" command - the cells are not removed, only their content is.

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MS Excel Formulas

The main function of MS Excel is to perform computations and calculations using the data stored in the worksheets. This is done by replacing actual numbers with references to the cells where they are stored in the table ? the cells' names ? in manually written mathematical formulas or Excel specific formulas. First, let us compute the mean value for the temperatures recorded on Monday, by adding them and dividing the sum by the number of values. The formula will be written below the data used ? in the B8 cell.

When you finish writing, press the "Enter" key to see the result. Attention: the text you wrote before is now displayed on the "Formula bar", while the B8 cell shows the result of the calculation.

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An easier way to do this calculation, especially for a large number of data cells, is to use an Excel formula. The formula for computing the mean is called "AVERAGE". It uses as parameter the area where the data is located, indicated by the upper left cell and the lower right cell, separated by ":". Attention: any computation performed in MS Excel must begin with the symbol "=".

If you press the "Enter" key you will obtain the same result as before, when using the first formula. In order to compute the mean value for the other columns, instead of writing the formula for each of them we can copy the first formula in the corresponding cell from the other columns. We can do this because MS Excel has the ability to change the parameters of a formula according to the place where it is copied. To copy the formula form B8 or B9 we can use the classical approach ("Copy"+"Paste") or use a shortcut ? select the cell where the formula is located, then drag it by the bottom right corner, thus performing an "auto fill" operation.

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While some formulas can and should be learned (SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, MEDIAN), the entire list of functions available in MS Excel is too big to be memorized. This is why all the functions can be used from the "Formulas"-"Insert Function" special menu (or the "fx" shortcut button from the "Formula bar").

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