Excel Basics - Lecture Notes - CIS 211 - Management Information Systems

Resources

For today's follow-along lab, you will need to use a Windows or Mac computer that has Microsoft Excel 2007 installed. You should download and use the excel file lec-01-pop.xlsx. This file contains population data published by the United States Census Bureau.

Lab: Excel Basics

In class, we will undertake a follow-along lab to learn the basics of Microsoft Excel. Below is a list of key topics covered in the follow-along lab. Items appearing in bold are accompanied by videos in the next section on this Web page.

• Formulas (also called Functions) and operators
  • SUM(cell1,cell2,cell3,...)
  • SUM(cell1:cell2)
  • + (addition)
  • - (subtraction)
  • * (multiplication)
  • / (division)
  • () (use of parentheses)
• Absolute and relative cell referencing
• Formatting cells as currency or percentages
• Formatting cell text (color, bold/italic)
• Changing the number of decimal places shown on numbers
• Copying & pasting cells
• Moving blocks of cells
• Deleting and inserting rows & columns
• Creating and manipulating a clustered column chart
• Changing the chart type

Additional Resources

Check the list of links in the green box on the announcements page of the class Blackboard site.

Videos

Illustrating the difference between relative cell referencing and absolute cell referencing:

Creating a clustered column chart in Excel: