Excel – what do the “auto’s” mean

When you are working in Excel – there are several “auto” functions and they can be confusing as to how and why they are different.. Hopefully this will help…

AutoFill – creates and/or completes a series of values in an Excel spreadsheet – for example you can type January at the top of a column, and if you then drag the + auto handle from the bottom right corner of the cell that January is typed in across the rows to the right of January, Excel will now “auto-fill” February, March, April etc and continue on…

AutoFormat – adds chosen attributes to your spreadsheets, such as font styles and sizes, borders and even ranges of numerical styles – so highlight the table or area you want to format and when you choose format, auto format various styles, colors etc will appear – choose the one you like and Excel will now format that portion of the table or spreadsheet that you have highlighted – don’t like what you’ve chosen – change it

AutoSum – this adds up a column or several columns or a row of figures in a spreadsheet. This is the icon for Auto Sum “S” – So if you put your cursor in a cell at the end of a row or column (or you can highlight the range of cells” and then click on this icon on the toolbar – once you have clicked on the icon, press enter on your keyboard and Excel will calculate the total for the selected range (By the way the keyboard shortcut for this that does the same thing is: Alt + =)

What is Excel?

EXCEL – is the #1 spreadsheet program used in the world today - typically it is part of the Office Suite with Word, Power Point etc. Fir those of you with WORKS, yours is called spreadsheet and works very much the same way. Many icons and features seem the same as in WORD - they are and work the same. At first excel may seem intimidating, but once you learn the basics you will find countless uses for it. Excel is just a large table – having more columns (256) and rows (16,000). When a column and row meet – that area is called a “cell”

WORKBOOK VS. WORKSHEET - In Excel, a workbook can consist of any number of worksheets (similar to a word document having a number of pages). Each worksheet has a tab that appears at the bottom of the workbook window in the left corner. To activate a different worksheet, just left click on the tab. To rename a worksheet, right click on the tab, choose rename & type the new name – To change the order of the worksheets, just drag the worksheet to the location you want it.

THE MORE COLUMNS THE BETTER – whenever we are working in excel. When you work with lists/texts – such as contact lists, the more information you separate the more flexibility you will have for sorting your information later on.