Welcome to the McGrath SeniorNet Learning Center Bulletin Board for the Introduction to Excel course.
This is the bulletin board for our SeniorNet class Introduction to Excel. I'll post the answers to questions that we could not answer in class and tips and suggestions about using Excel. Don't hesitate to e-mail me with any questions or comments you have about the course—my e-mail address is at the bottom of the page.
I am not teaching Excel in the current session at McGrath. Please see the rest of this page for notes from previous sessions that I taught.
The key to learning Excel is repetition. The more you go through the procedures in your manual, the more you will learn and retain. There is no substitute for repetition. So practice, practice, practice!
Q- Do I have to bring a flash drive to class?
A- Yes, so you can copy the lesson files and work on them outside of class. A flash drive (also called a thumb drive, USB drive, memory stick, or jump drive) is the best way to take the lesson files with you as well as to save the work you do in class on the lesson files.
Q- I'm having trouble selecting a range of cells by dragging with the mouse. Is there an easier way to select a range of cells?
A- Yes. Click the cell in the upper left corner of the range you want to select. Use the scroll bars to move the worksheet display until the cell in the lower right corner of the range you want to select is on the screen. Hold down the SHIFT key on the keyboard and click the lower right cell of the range. The entire range is selected.
Q- Why do some of the cells in my worksheet have ###### in them rather than the number that I expected?
A- The column is not wide enough to display all the digits in the number. On the menu bar, click Format and Column and Autofit Selection to make the column width wider. You can also set the width manually by clicking Format and Column and Width and entering a wider column width. The default column width is 9.
Q- How do I set a Print Area when the print area input box in the Page Setup dialog is grayed out (i.e., not available)?
A - You invoked the Page Setup dialog box from within the Print Preview screen. Setting the print area cannot be interactive from the Print Preview screen, so when you use the Setup... button from there, the Print Area input box is inactive. Close the Print Preview screen to return to the worksheet. Then invoke the Page Setup dialog from the menu items: File | Page Setup. The Print Area input box will be active now.
Q- I have a column of payments in column C and I keep a running total of the sum of those payments going down the page in column D. When I look at the first three payments in column C, the sum of those three should end in a 6, but the cumulative total in column D of those three ends in a 5. Is Excel adding wrong?
A- No, Excel is accurate. The apparent discrepancy is caused by rounding. Your payments in column C are the result of a multiplication. Even though you are displaying (through the way you have formatted the columns) two decimal places, Excel stores the results of a formula calculation to 15 decimal places. Excel rounds the stored result to display it. It is this rounding that can make it appear that Excel has made a mistake in adding. For calculations to two decimal places such as this example, you can see that the addition is really accurate by temporarily changing your display format to show 4 decimal places so you can see which values are rounded up and which rounded down in the display. When you do this, you will see that the cumulative total is accurate and that the apparent discrepancy is caused by rounding.
Microsoft changed the command interface dramatically between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. Gone are the menus and toolbars of Excel 2003, replaced by the ribbon of Excel 2007. Most commands' locations are different in 2007, so the learning curve is steep, even if you are proficient in 2003. We changed the version we use to teach from to Excel 2007 because is the current version and has been out for two years, so we need to "keep up with the times." There are several versions of Excel that you may have on your home computer. Click on this link to go to a web page that shows all the "modern" versions. You can check which version you have by clicking the menu item Help and then clicking About Microsoft Office Excel.
We talked briefly about circular references. Here is a link to a discussion of what they are and how to handle them: circular references.
If you have any question about the class or using Excel, please e-mail me at:
Copyright 2009 Jim Brown
Last updated: 2010-02-20