One of the harder things to do on computers is mastering spreadsheets. Indeed, it is intimidating to even think of beginning to used excel formulas. We know from watching others work in the program that there is a lot involved. It doesn’t have to been such a miserable experience. There are a few functions you can learn quick;y that will start your journey towards formula work in excel. Here are a few things to try when you first open an excel spreadsheet.
1.) Remember the equal sign- No formulas are going to work for you unless they begin with an =. You will see after entering the equal sign that the cell is looking for you to type more or begin a formula to reference another cell. If you hit the enter key, you will be confined to just that cell and can work through the rest of the formula.
2.) Remember the formula bar- The excel program is designed to walk you through your formula. Simply click in the formula bar and type a search of what function you’d like to perform. There are boxes for you to reference fields so that you can build your formula, hot enter, and be on your way.
3.) The sum function- It’s quite easy to fun a column of figures in a spreadsheet. Find the empty cell located just south of the numbers you want to add. Enter an equal sign and the word sum so that it looks like this (=sum). The open a parentheses, highlight the area you want to sum, and click enter to reveal your total.
4.) Finding a median or average- Once you know how to sum a column of numbers, it becomes easy to do a variety of other tasks with them. Simply insert the word median or average in order to find those ranges for your set of numbers.
Microsoft Excel doesn’t have to be an overly-complicated program. It all starts with a few key strokes and results before you have the confidence to do much more.