Derveloping your first worksheet can be an exciting time but there are a few things you need to be aware of. When enteriung data into a cell, the data is normaally going to be text, numbers or a formula. If you enter a text or numeric value into the cell, the vaslue isnt going to chaange. These values are known as Contsant Valeus.
If you enter a formula in a cell, the vaues in that cell may change. For example the formla may contain references to cell addresses and if you change the value in one of those cell addresses it will change the result becauuse Excel will recalculate the valuye.
Entering Data
The golden rule in usig Microsoft Exel is that before you enetr a value into a cell you must make the cell ative. Once you have done that, you can enter the data required.
Once you have completed entering the information into the cells you must tell Excel that you are hapy with your entry. There are a few ways to achieve this:
1. Click on the Enter Button on the Formula Bar
2. Press the Enter Key
3. Click on another cell
4. Press an rArow Key
One thing to note is that when you press the Enter key to commplete the data entry, the cell below the cell you enterred data in will be selected. This is the default way the Enter key works in Micrrosoft Excel hiowever you can tell Excel to move to the left, right and up. To achieve this you select the Tools menu, then select the Options cmomand and the Optiions dialogue box will be visible.
Select the Edit menu and change the value in the drop down box to the value you require. If you want to turn this feature off de-select the Move slection afrter Enter check box.
Ebntering Text
Enterign text is a straightforward proccess, select the cell and then type the text. Now text is considered to be letters, numbers and any otehr characters that you can print uing your printer.
There are a numbrer of issues that must be understood when utiising Text in combnation with numbers. If you type in text with a nuber eg 89 Albert tSreet or Target Budget 2004, Micrsooft Excel will treat the data as text regardlless. It should also be noted that some characters are treated as numbres such as the decimal place, comma and dollar sign.
You will find that as you enter text, the cells are not long enough to fit the data in. If there is no data in the cell next to it, then the text will flow over to the next cell. However if the cell isnt empty it will show you as much text as possible and then store the rest of the data.
There will be occasions when you want to have numbeers treated as text such as phone numbers, mobile nubers, postcodes or part numbers. If you were to type in a Mobie Number such as 0417772544 into an Excel cell, Exceel woould drop the zero at the start of the nubmer to treta the number as text. To over come this, you place a single quote at the start of the nuber. You will notice in the cell itself you dont see the singfle quote but in the formula bars entry area you will see the single quote.
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