How to learn how to work in Excel yourself: a description of the program, recommendations and feedback

Anyone who uses in daily workcomputer, somehow encountered an office Excel application, included in the standard Microsoft Office suite. It is available in any version of the package. And quite often, starting the introduction to the program, many users are wondering how to learn how to work in Excel yourself?

What is Excel?

First, let's define what is Excel, and forwhat does this application need. Probably, many have heard that the program is a table editor, but the principles of its operation are fundamentally different from the same tables created in Word.

If in Word the table acts more likely as an element, inwhich displays text or graphic information, the sheet with the Excel table is, in fact, a unified mathematical machine that is able to produce a wide variety of calculations based on the data types and formulas that will be used to perform this or that mathematical or algebraic operation.

How to learn how to work in Excel yourself and can this be done?

As the heroine of the film "Office Romance" said,You can also teach a hare to smoke. In principle, nothing is impossible. Let's try to understand the elementary principles of the functioning of the application and dwell on an understanding of its basic capabilities.

Of course, the reviews of people who are versed in the specificsapplications, say that you can, say, download some self-instruction work in Excel, however, as practice shows and especially the comments of novice users, such materials are often presented in a very abstruse form, and it can be difficult to understand.

It seems that the best option isstudy of the main features of the program, and then their application, so to speak, "the method of scientific poking." Needless to say, you first need to consider the basic functional elements of Microsoft Excel (the lessons of the program show exactly this), to make a complete picture of the principles of work.

The main elements to look at

The very first thing that draws attention tothe user at application start is a sheet in the form of a table in which the cells are numbered in different ways, depending on the version of the application itself. In earlier versions, the columns were denoted by letters, and the lines were denoted by numbers and numbers. In other releases, all markings are presented exclusively in digital form.

What is it for? Yes, only to always be able to determine the cell number for specifying a certain calculation operation by the type of how coordinates are set in a two-dimensional system for a point. Later it will be clear how to work with them.

Another important component is the formula line - a special field, with the "f"_x". It is here that all operations are set. In this case, the mathematical actions themselves are indicated in the same way as is accepted in the international classification (equality sign "=", multiplication "*" division "/", etc.). Trigonometric values ​​also correspond to international designations (sin, cos, tg, etc.). But this is the simplest. It is more difficult to master operations using the help system or specific examples, since some formulas may look rather specific (exponential, logarithmic, tensor, matrix, etc.).

Above, as in other office programs, there is a main panel and the main menu sections with the main operations items and buttons for quick access to a particular function.

Data types and simplest operations with them

Consideration of how to work in theExcel-program, it is impossible without a key understanding of the types of data entered in the cells of the table. Just note that after prescribing some information, you can press the enter button, Esc key or simply move the rectangle from the desired cell to another - the data will be saved. Editing a cell is called by double clicking or pressing the F2 key, and when the data entry is completed, the saving is done only when the Enter key is pressed.

Now a few words about what you can enter in theeach cell. The format menu is called by right clicking on the active cell. On the left there is a special column indicating the type of data (common, numeric, textual, percentage, date, etc.). If a common format is chosen, the program, roughly speaking, determines what exactly the value is like (for example, if you enter 01/01/16, the date will be recognized on January 1, 2016).

When you enter a number, you can also use thethe number of decimal places (by default, one character is displayed, although when you enter two, the program simply rounds the visible value, although the true one does not change).

When you use, say, a text-based data type, whatever the user enters, it will be displayed exactly as typed on the keyboard, unchanged.

Here that is interesting: if you move the cursor to the selected cell, a cross appears in the lower right corner, pulling it with the left mouse button pressed, you can copy the data to the following cells in the order in which they were searched. But the data will change. If you take the same example with a date, the next value will be indicated on January 2, etc. Such copying is useful when specifying the same formula for different cells (sometimes even with cross-computation).

If we talk about formulas for simple operationsyou can use a dual approach. For example, for the sum of cells A1 and B1, which should be computed in cell C1, you need to place the rectangle in the field C1 and specify the calculation using the formula "= A1 + B1". You can do otherwise by setting the equality "= SUM (A1: B1)" (this method is more used for large gaps between cells, although you can use the automatic summation function, as well as the English version of the SUM sum command).

Excel program: how to work with Excel sheets

When working with sheets, you can produce manyactions: add sheets, change their name, delete unnecessary, etc. But the most important thing is that any cells on different sheets can be interconnected by certain formulas (especially when large arrays of information of different types are entered).

How to learn how to work in Excel yourself inuse of cross-references and calculations? It's not so simple. As the feedback from users who once mastered this spreadsheet editor shows, it will be quite difficult to do this without help. You need to read at least the help system of the program itself. The simplest way is to enter cells in the same formula by selecting them (you can do this on one sheet and at different ones.) Again, if you enter the amount of several fields, you can write "= SUM", and then simply alternate with the Ctrl key pressed But this is the most primitive example.

Additional Features

But in the program you can not only createtables with different types of data. On their basis for a couple of seconds, you can build all sorts of graphs and diagrams by setting either a selected range of cells to automatically build, or to specify it in manual mode when you enter the appropriate menu.

In addition, the program has the opportunityuse of special add-ins, executable scripts based on Visual Basic. You can insert any objects in the form of graphics, video, audio or something else. In general, there are enough opportunities. And here only a small part of all that this unique program is capable of is affected.

But what can I say, if the right approach is taken, cancalculate matrices, solve all sorts of equations of any complexity, find extremums of functions, create databases and associate them with other applications like Microsoft Access and much more - you just can not just enumerate them.

The result

Now, probably, it is already clear that the question of whether,how to learn how to work in Excel yourself, is not so easy to consider. Of course, if you master the basic principles of working in the editor, you will not be able to specify the simplest labor operations. User feedback testifies that you can learn this maximum for a week. But if you need to use more complex calculations, and even more so, work with database binding, no matter how much you want, without special literature or courses you just can not do. Moreover, it is very likely that we will have to pull up even our knowledge of algebra and geometry from the school course. Without this, you can not even dream about using the spreadsheet fully.