Excel & Its Features

Excel & Its Features (For beginners)

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft. It is used for calculations, graphs, pivot tables and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) a macro programming language.

It’s a very useful, dynamic & user friendly application, which used as a reporting solution.

Components of excel:

1.        Workbook: A workbook is a spreadsheet file. By default, each workbook in Excel contains three pages or worksheets.

2.        Worksheet: A worksheet is a single page or sheet in a spreadsheet program such as Excel

3.        Rows: Rows run horizontally in an Excel

4.        Column: Columns run vertically in a worksheet

5.        Cells: The intersection point between a column and a row is a cell.

6.        Range: group of Cells is called Range

Excel Functions: Excel Formulas are divided into following Categories however you can start apply function with basic operators such as + (Plus),- (Minus), / (Divide) & * (Multiply). Example “=1+2”

1.        Compatibility functions

2.        Cube functions

3.        Database functions

4.        Date and time functions

5.        Engineering functions

6.        Financial functions

7.        Information functions

8.        Logical functions

9.        Lookup and reference functions

10.     Math and trigonometry functions

11.     Statistical functions

12.     Text functions

13.     User defined functions that are installed with add-ins*

In Excel 2010, you can find all functions under Formula Menu under formula Library

 

Note:  

·         You can initiate a function by just entering “=” in any excel Cell.

·         *User define function are those functions which are not part of Excel Package however created by the user as per their requirements. It can be done through VBA. We will learn more on this in coming articles

Excel Charts: MS Excel Support various charts to display data in a graphical and meaningful representation and after creating the chart you can use the same by just copy/pasting to your presentation.

 

1.        Column charts

2.        Line charts

3.        Pie charts

4.        Bar charts

5.        Area charts

6.        XY (scatter) charts

7.        Stock charts

8.        Surface charts

9.        Doughnut charts

10.     Bubble charts

11.     Radar charts

In Excel 2010, you can find all charts under Insert Menu under Charts.

The simple way to create chart is just select the data range > Go to insert Menu Bar > Under Charts Select the required Chart.
 

 
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications): As it's name suggest it is extension of VB which is designed by Microsoft for Microsoft applications, such as Excel, Access, Word etc. It's a macro programming language, which used to automate excel and other Microsoft application. To Automate Excel you need to write Code (VBA script) in VBA Editor. 

You can open VBA Editor by just pressing Alt+F11 (Shortcut Key) or clicking on Visual Basic under Developer Menu Bar.

Learn More about VBA

Among all these features, excel have few limitation however these limitations does not impact it's ability to perform high level calculations. Click here to know about Limitations of Excel.

We will talk more about excel in the next article.

You can share your feedback and post your excel queries in this blog.