Microsoft Excel 2003: Moving Around the Spreadsheet

You can move around the spreadsheet/cells by clicking your mouse on various cells, or by using the up, down, right and left arrow movement keys on the keyboard. Or, you can move up and down by using the “elevator” bars on the right and bottom of the spreadsheet. Go ahead and move around the spreadsheet. Hold down the down arrow key on the keyboard for a few seconds – then click-on a cell. Notice how the Name Box always tells you “where you are.” Now hold down the right arrow key on the keyboard for a few seconds. Notice how the alphabet changes from single letters (A, B, C,. …. Z) to several letter combinations (AA, AB, AC). There are hundreds of columns and thousands of rows in a spreadsheet. Anytime you desire to return to the Home Cell (A1) simply click-in the Name Box and type-in A1. Then tap the Enter key and you will go to cell A1. You can go to any cell by this method. Simply type-in a row and column, tap the Enter key, and you’ll go to that cell.

Now that you have the “feel” of how to move around Excel spreadsheet, go to the cells as indicated below and type-in the following:

Cl (Your Name)'s Budget. It should look similar to the image below. Do not tap Enter when you finish


Look at cells C1 and D1. Notice how your entry has spilled over from C1 into D1. Sometimes this is a problem, and sometimes it is not. Tap the Enter key and then click-on cell D1 and type-in the word BONZO and tap Enter key.


Notice how Bonzo now COVERS the right part of your original entry!! Now move back to cell C1 and click-on it. Look at the upper part of the spreadsheet, just above the cells where you typed Bonzo. Your name and the word budget are still there! Bonzo only COVERED the portion in cell D1. See the image and arrow below.


There are several ways to take care of this. For the moment move back to cell D1 and click-on cell D1. Tap the Delete key (above the arrow movement keys on the keyboard). Notice that Bonzo disappears and your entire entry reappears. This is one way to expose the entry. We'll look at some others as we go along.


Now we'll continue making some entries. Move to the following cells and type-in the information indicated. You can click-on each cell and then type-in the entries.

If you happen to make a mistake simply retype the entries. Later on we'll see how to
edit mistakes. Any time you want to replace something in a cell you can simply retype
a new entry and it will replace the old one.

Cell Type-in

A3 Income

B4 Parents
B5 Job
B6 Investments
B7 Total

A10 Expenses

B11 Food
B12 Beverages
B13 Parties
B14 Miscellaneous
B15 Total
Your spreadsheet should now look like the picture below.


At this point you probably have noticed, the words "Investments" and "Miscellaneous" run over the spaces given in the cells. Do not be concerned at this point. We’ll soon fix this.

Now, type the numbers in the cells indicated:

C4 300
C5 50
C6 150
When you type-in the 150, tap Enter.

Your spreadsheet should look like the one on the right. We would like to place an underline at the bottom of the three figures so that we can indicate a total below – in cell C7. Point to cell C7 with the mouse. That's where we want the line always move the cursor to the place where you want to insert a line. With the Arrow on cell C7 tap the RIGHT mouse button.



contined........