Microsoft Excel: Working with Spreadsheets

1What is a spreadsheet? Rows, columns and cells

A spreadsheet is a big grid for holding numbers and words in neat boxes. Microsoft Excel is the most popular program for making them. Picture a sheet of squared maths paper that can also do your sums automatically — that is Excel.

The grid is built from three simple things:

• Rows — the lines that go across (left to right). Each row has a number down the left side: 1, 2, 3…
• Columns — the lines that go down (top to bottom). Each column has a letter along the top: A, B, C…
• Cell — one single box where a row and a column meet. This is where you type.

Every cell has its own name made of its column letter and row number, like a seat number in a cinema. The highlighted box above is cell B2 — column B, row 2. The whole grid is called a worksheet (or just sheet), and a saved Excel file is a workbook that can hold several sheets on the tabs at the bottom.

2Entering and editing data in cells

Putting information into Excel is easy: click a cell, type, and confirm. Excel happily holds three kinds of data — text (words like names), numbers (like 250), and dates (like 07-06-2026).

Type into a cell

To change what is already in a cell, you have two choices. To replace it completely, click the cell and just type the new value. To fix only part of it, double-click the cell (or press F2) — this opens the cell for editing so you can move the cursor and correct a single letter.

One small but useful trick is AutoFill. After typing into a cell, you'll see a tiny square at its bottom-right corner — the fill handle. Click and drag it down and Excel continues the pattern: type Jan and drag, and you get Feb, Mar, Apr automatically; type 1 and 2 in two cells, select both, and drag to count onwards.

3Formatting cells — borders, colours, alignment, number formats

Formatting means changing how a cell looks, not what it holds. A tidy, well-formatted sheet is far easier to read. All the tools live on the Home tab of the ribbon (the strip of buttons along the top).

Make text stand out

• Bold, italic, underline — the B, I, U buttons. Bold is perfect for heading rows.
• Font colour — the A with a colour bar changes the text colour.
• Fill colour — the paint-bucket button colours the cell background, great for highlighting totals.

Borders and alignment

Borders draw the lines around cells when you print. Select your cells, click the Borders button and choose All Borders to box in a table. Alignment decides where text sits in the cell — left, centre or right — using the alignment buttons; numbers usually look neatest aligned right, headings centred.

Number formats — very important

A number format tells Excel how to display a number without changing its value. The same 250 can show as money or a percentage:

4Basic formulas — SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT

This is where Excel truly shines. A formula is an instruction that does a calculation for you. Every formula begins with an equals sign = — that tells Excel "work this out" instead of just showing the text.

A function is a ready-made formula with a name, like SUM. You give it a range of cells in brackets, written as first cell : last cell. So B2:B6 means "all cells from B2 down to B6".

Write your first SUM

5Cell references — understanding A1, B2 style references

A cell reference is just the address of a cell — its column letter and row number, like A1 or B2. Instead of typing a number into a formula, you point to the cell that holds the number. That way, change the cell and the formula updates on its own.

For example, if cell A1 holds 100 and A2 holds 50, then =A1+A2 returns 150. Change A1 to 200 and the answer becomes 250 by itself — no retyping.

Copying formulas down a column

Say B2 holds =C2*D2 (price times quantity). Drag the fill handle down and Excel is clever: row 3 becomes =C3*D3, row 4 becomes =C4*D4, and so on. The references shift automatically to match each row. This is called a relative reference, and it saves enormous time.

6Creating charts and graphs from data

Numbers in a grid are useful, but a chart (a graph) lets you see the story at a glance — which month was biggest, whether sales are rising, how a budget splits up. Excel builds charts from your data in seconds.

Make a chart in four steps

Three chart types cover almost everything a beginner needs:

7Sorting and filtering data

When a list grows long, sorting and filtering help you find things fast. Sorting reorders the rows; filtering temporarily hides rows you don't want to see, without deleting anything.

Sort a list

Sorting puts rows in order — A to Z, smallest to largest, or oldest to newest.

Filter a list

A filter shows only the rows that match what you choose, like a smart sieve.

8Freeze panes and working with large sheets

As a sheet fills with hundreds of rows, you scroll down and the heading row disappears off the top — now you can't tell which column is which. Freeze Panes fixes this by pinning the heading row (or first column) in place while the rest scrolls.

Freeze the top heading row

You can also Freeze First Column (handy when names are in column A and you scroll right), or click a cell and choose plain Freeze Panes to lock everything above and to the left of it at once. To undo, return to View and click Unfreeze Panes.

With frozen headings and a few keyboard jumps, even a sheet of a thousand rows feels easy to handle.

9Real-world practice — budget, attendance and marks

Now let's put everything together with three small sheets you'll actually use. Each one combines typing, formatting and a formula or two — exactly the skills from earlier topics.

1. A simple budget tracker

List what you spend, then let SUM add it up. When you change a figure, the total updates itself.

2. An attendance sheet

Mark P for present each day, then count the Ps with COUNTIF — a counter that only counts cells matching what you ask. =COUNTIF(B2:F2,"P") counts how many days that student was present in cells B2 to F2.

3. A marks register

Enter marks, then find each student's total with SUM and the class average with AVERAGE.

10Saving, printing and sharing Excel files

Once your sheet is built, you'll want to keep it, put it on paper, or send it to someone. Excel makes all three simple.

Saving your work

Printing neatly

Click File › Print to see a preview of exactly what will come out. Two settings save most beginners a lot of wasted paper:

• Orientation — choose Landscape (wide) for sheets with many columns.
• Fit Sheet on One Page — under Scaling, this shrinks a slightly-too-big sheet so it doesn't spill onto a second page.

Sharing with others

If your file is saved in OneDrive (Microsoft's online storage), click the Share button at the top-right, type the person's email, and choose whether they can edit or only view. Otherwise, simply attach the saved .xlsx or .pdf file to an email.

That's the full journey — from an empty grid to a saved, printed, shared spreadsheet. Try the practical task below, then take the quiz to lock it all in.