To start Excel double click with the left mouse button (all mouse operations use the left button of a two button mouse unless otherwise noted) on the Excel icon.

The screen should look something like this:

To enter data or text into a cell, use the mouse or the arrow keys to highlight the cell of interest and then type what you wish to have in that cell. Note that each cell is named by its column followed by its row. Thus the second cell down on the left is A2. You will use these cell designations when performing mathematics or making graphs.

There are a wide variety of functions available in a program like Excel and we will only look at a few here - you should experiment with others and use the help facilities in the program.

To practice entering and plotting data, make a table of numbers and their squares. In A1, type number. In A2 type 1. What you now want to do is enter the numbers 2-10 starting in A3. One way is to just enter all of the numbers - easy if you are just going to 10. Another way is to relate the numbers through a formula. In A3 enter = and then use the arrow keys to move to A2 and the enter +1. The result will be that the number 2 shows up in A3. You have told the program to put in A3 the result of adding 1 to the number in A2. Now you want to copy that scheme for the remaining numbers. Click in cell A3 and and move the cursor to the lower right corner of the box around A3. The cursor will turn into a plus sign. Drag the box by the small square under the cursor so that it goes from A4 to A21. Then press the enter key and the numbers from 3-20 should appear in the cells A4:A21 (the use of a colon to separate two cell name defines a block of cells and is used frequently in spreadsheets).

Now go to cell B1 and enter square. With B2 highlighted, type =, use the arrow key to move to A2 and then type ^2 (this tells the program to square the number in A2). The number 1 should appear in B2. Now copy this from B2:B21 and you should get the squares of the numbers in A2:A21.

To plot the squares versus the numbers, move the mouse cursor to A2. Hold down the mouse button and drag it over the block A2:B21. You are now ready to make a graph. Click on the Insert menu tab and the menu region should look something like this:

There are many choices for chart type but you will almost always want to use Scatter (xy plot). Using the Design, Layout and Format tabs you then have many options for getting the graph to look the way you want it to. There is no advantage to spending a lot of time on these options just for the sake of style.

You now know the basics of entering text, data and formulae, copying, and graphing (charting in Excelese). You will also want to use some statistical functions. You will use some of these in the on-line statistics exercises.
 

Some other useful tools:

Absolute referencing: Frequently you will want to use formulas in Excel which include references to cells which should not change as you copy the formula down a column. For example, you might be working with a formula which includes temperature and some other variable such as wavelength of light. If you want to plot the result of applying this formula to a range of wavelengths, at a constant temperature, you would put the wavelengths in as your x-axis data. You could store the temperature in a cell, say B2. When you write the formula, you want to make sure that the temperature cell remains B2, while the wavelength cell changes as you copy the formula over the range of wavelengths. This is accomplished through referencing. Typing a cell reference as $B$4 tells Excel to never change the position of this cell. There are other forms of referencing - $B4 would change the row but not the column, and B$4 would change the column but not the row. On a PC you can type the cell reference B$ and then use the function key F4 to toggle among the various forms of referencing (though it may be easier just to type the $). One major advantage of using this form of referencing is that you can just change the value of the temperature in cell B$ and the spreadsheet (including any graphs you have created) will be updated to reflect this new temperature.

Clicking below will open an Excel spreadsheet that illustrates many of the principles described here, as well as showing more advanced features.

Change the temperatures in cells B4-B6 and observe the change in the plot. Move to cells B9 or C13. Clicking once on the cells will show you (on the editing line at the top of the spreadsheet) the formula that is operative in that cell. Both of these cells use some form of absolute referencing, as well as other features not described here.

Selecting non-adjacent ranges of cells: You may wish to construct a graph, or perform some other operation that involves selecting ranges of cells, using non-adjacent columns. To do this, select the first column then hold the Ctrl (control) key down while selecting the second (and subsequent) column(s).

Help: click on the button with the arrow and question mark on it. This allows you to drag the icon to any place in the spreadsheet and provides what is known as context-sensitive help, help for where you are in the program at this time. You can also access the help index and choose any topic you wish to know more about. It is useful to approach Excel with the idea that it can do what you want it to do, although it may take significant effort to get it to do so.

Delete: to delete what is in a single cell just type over it. To delete a range of cells select them with the mouse (hold the button down and drag over them) then press the Del key and answer the question that shows up in the box (usually it is sufficient to just press Enter at that time).

• Flick Coleman wcoleman@wellesley.edu
• Dept. of Chemistry
• Date Created: Aug. 11, 1995
• Last Modified: August 21, 2008
• Expires: Aug 1, 2014
• copyright by W.F. Coleman - 1997-2008