Lesson: Creating a Microsoft Excel Workbook

Starting Microsoft Excel

To start Microsoft Excel (see screenshot below):

1. Click the Start menu.
2. Select All Programs.
3. Select Microsoft Office.
4. Select Microsoft Excel 2013.

Creating a Workbook

When you open Microsoft Excel, in Excel 2013, you will have an option to open a template or a blank document; to create a new spreadsheet open a blank document. As you can see in the screenshot below, the default workbook is named "Book1".

Cell A1 is automatically selected when Excel opens. To enter a number or text in cell A1, simply begin typing:

Saving a Workbook

The first time you save a Microsoft Excel workbook, you need to give it a name and location. To do this:

1. From the FILE menu, select Save As:
2. Selecting Save As opens the Save As section (in Excel 2013), where you can choose the location to save your workbook. Then, a dialog box opens, in which you can see:
   1. The file name. Note that this is highlighted as Microsoft Excel expects you to choose your own name for the workbook. Simply begin typing to do so.
   2. The file type. Note that this defaults to "Excel Workbook", which is the default file type for Microsoft Excel 2013 workbooks. (.xlsx) When final, you can choose to save your workbook as another type, such as a pdf, simply by choosing "PDF (*.pdf)" here. If you want to maintain backward compatibility with previous versions of Excel, choose "Excel 97-2003 Workbook" here.
3. After you have entered these fields, simply click Save to save the workbook.

The Status Bar

The Status Bar, located at the bottom of Excel, shows basic information about your workbook and enables you to change your viewing settings. Specific items on the Status Bar include:

1. Ready status. Ready indicates that you are ready to begin entering data. Enter indicates that you are working within a cell. Edit indicates that you are editing existing data within a cell.
2. Information about highlighted data. You can customize what you see, but things you see by default include Average, Count and Sum.
3. View controls. You can choose from a selection of views (Normal, Page Layout, and Page Break Preview).
4. Zoom control. You can zoom in or out, to make the workbook bigger or smaller, based on your personal preference. Zooming changes the size of what you're viewing. It does not change what you actually print out.

Adding and Deleting Worksheets

Depending on your settings, Excel workbooks typically open with one to three worksheets, named Sheet1, Sheet2, etc:

To add additional worksheets, simply click on the Insert worksheet icon (which looks like a worksheet with a plus sign in Excel 2007 and 2010) ().

To delete a worksheet, simply right-click on the worksheet name and select Delete:

To change the name of a worksheet, double-click the current name and begin typing:

Copying and Moving Worksheets

Changing the order of worksheets in Excel involves moving or copying worksheets; you can move or copy worksheets within a workbook.

To move a worksheet:

1. Select the worksheet you want to move.
2. From the HOME tab, in the Cells group, select Format.
3. From the Format drop-down, select Move or Copy Sheet under Organize Sheets.
4. In the Move or Copy dialog box, under Before sheet:, select the location to which to move the worksheet, and then click OK.

To copy a worksheet:

1. Select the worksheet you want to copy.
2. From the HOME tab, in the Cells group, select Format.
3. From the Format drop-down, select Move or Copy Sheet under Organize Sheets.
4. In the Move or Copy dialog box, select Create a copy.

The copy now appears with the same title and (2).

Spliting the Worksheet Window

When working in Excel, it can sometimes be helpful to split the worksheet into two separate, so that you can compare data in the sheet.

To split the window:

1. Click where you want to split the window.
2. On the VIEW tab, in the Window group, select Split.
3. You can now scroll through each window separately to easily view and compare data.

Changing the Order of Worksheets

You can easily change the order of worksheets in a workbook.

To change the order of worksheets by clicking and dragging the sheet tab to a new location.

Closing a Workbook

The two most common ways to close a Microsoft Excel workbook are:

1. Click the "X" in the upper-right-hand corner:
2. Select Close from the FILE menu:

When you close your workbook, you will be prompted to save if you have made any changes since the last time you saved.

Creating a Microsoft Excel Workbook

In this exercise, you will create, save and close a Microsoft Excel workbook. You will also name a worksheet. If you currently have Microsoft Excel open, please close it before starting the exercise.

1. Create and save the following workbook in your Excel2013.1/Exercises folder:

Solution: