What is Microsoft Excel?
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program that is used to record and analyze numerical data. Think of a spreadsheet as a collection of columns and rows that form a table. Alphabetical letters are usually assigned to columns and numbers are usually assigned to rows. The point where a column and a row meet is called a cell. The address of a cell is given by the letter representing the column and the number representing a row. Let’s illustrate this using the following image.

Why Is Microsoft Excel Important?

We all deal with numbers in one way or the other. We all have daily expenses which we pay for from the monthly income that we earn. For one to spend wisely, they will need to know their income vs. expenditure. Microsoft Excel comes in handy when we want to record, analyze and store such numeric data.



In this tutorial, we are going to cover the following topics.

How to open Microsoft Excel
Understanding the Ribbon
Understanding the Worksheet
Customizing Microsoft Excel environment
How to Open Microsoft Excel?
Running Excel is not different from running any other Windows program. If you are running Windows with a GUI like (Windows XP, Vista, and 7) follow the following steps.

Click on start menu
Point to all programs
Point to Microsoft Excel
Click on Microsoft Excel
Alternatively, you can also open it from the start menu if it has been added there. You can also open it from the desktop shortcut if you have created one.

For this tutorial, we will be working with Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Excel 2013. Follow the following steps to run Excel on Windows 8.1

Click on start menu
Search for Excel N.B. even before you even typing, all programs starting with what you have typed will be listed.
Click on Microsoft Excel
Understanding the Ribbon
The ribbon provides shortcuts to commands in Excel. A command is an action that the user performs. An example of a command is creating a new document, printing a documenting, etc.
Ribbon components explained
Ribbon start button – it is used to access commands i.e. creating new documents, saving existing work, printing, accessing the options for customizing Excel, etc.

Ribbon tabs – the tabs are used to group similar commands together. The home tab is used for basic commands such as formatting the data to make it more presentable, sorting and finding specific data within the spreadsheet.

Ribbon bar – the bars are used to group similar commands together. As an example, the Alignment ribbon bar is used to group all the commands that are used to align data together.

Understanding the worksheet (Rows and Columns, Sheets, Workbooks)
A worksheet is a collection of rows and columns. When a row and a column meet, they form a cell. Cells are used to record data. Each cell is uniquely identified using a cell address. Columns are usually labelled with letters while rows are usually numbers.

A workbook is a collection of worksheets. By default, a workbook has three cells in Excel. You can delete or add more sheets to suit your requirements. By default, the sheets are named Sheet1, Sheet2 and so on and so forth. You can rename the sheet names to more meaningful names i.e. Daily Expenses, Monthly Budget, etc.



Customization Microsoft Excel Environment
Personally I like the black colour, so my excel theme looks blackish. Your favorite colour could be blue, and you too can make your theme colour look blue-like. If you are not a programmer, you may not want to include ribbon tabs i.e. developer. All this is made possible via customization. In this sub-section, we are going to look at;
Customization the ribbon
Setting the colour theme
Settings for formulas
Proofing settings
Save settings
Customization of ribbon
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