Microsoft Excel Introduction

Are you an expert in Microsoft Excel? Most of us may have faced this question once in a while when you are attending the interviews. Top employers only prefer those candidates who have enough knowledge in MS Excel because most of them perform their daily operations using Excel. Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful tools that help to maintain and analyze large amount of data within a short period of time. Most of us must have learned the basics of MS Excel from our early school days itself and will be familiar with the interface. For those who are beginners, it is very important to understand the basic components and interface before going into operations. Some of the basic components of Microsoft Excel are listed below:

• Microsoft office button: The MS office button appears on the top left corner of the MS Excel 2010 window. This button enables you to gain access to the options like New, Open, Save, Save As, Recent, Print etc.

• Quick access toolbar: Some of the options like Save, Save As, Undo and Redo are very often used. Therefore, quick access toolbar provide easy access to these options and it helps the beginners to perform these actions very quickly. Quick access toolbar is located on the right side of the Microsoft office button.

• Title bar: Like all other MS office applications, Excel also holds a title bar. The name of the document or workbook, which is currently in use, will be displayed on the Title bar.

• The Ribbon: In Microsoft Excel, a set of commands are used to perform certain operations. MS Excel 2010 uses the Ribbon to specify these commands. Ribbon consist of many tabs, which again consist of many command groups and their buttons. You can select the commands by clicking the related button. Ribbon is located near the excel window.

• The Formula Bar: The formula bar consists of two boxes. The left box or name box displays the cell address of the cell, which we are currently working with and the right section displays the cell entries like any values, formulas etc.

• The Status Bar: Status bar displays quick information like the count, sum, average, minimum and maximum value of selected numbers etc. The status bar is displayed at the bottom of the Excel window and can be customized according to our requirement.

• The Worksheet: Worksheets are the most important components of MS Excel. It contains many rows and columns. The rows are numbered from 1 to 1,048576 and columns are marked as A to Z and the continuation as AA, AB…AZ followed by AAA, AAB…, until XFD.

• Cells: Cells are boxes on a worksheet. The values, formulas etc. are entered in the cell and all the operations are performed based on the cell value. A cell address can be defined as the combination of a row coordinate and a column coordinate.

• Charts and Graphs: MS Excel is one of the excellent tools that help in the visual representation of data and information. It provides many options to create bar charts, column charts and graphs in support of your data and automatically revises the charts, once the data gets modified.

• Formulas: MS Excel also provides several ready to use formulas which makes your calculations more quick and accurate. They range from basic calculation formulas to more complex engineering formulas.