Microsoft Excel is electronic spreadsheet software.  You can use Excel to produce professional reports that perform simple business or personal calculations, financial or scientific calculations, or database management and event let you create charts.  Excel is powerful but easy to use.  A spreadsheet is the computer equivalent of a paper ledger sheet. It consists of a grid made from columns and rows. It is an environment that can make number manipulation easy and somewhat painless.

What makes a spreadsheet work. Spreadsheets are made up of

  • columns
  • rows
  • and their intersections are called cells

In each cell there may be the following types of data

  • text (labels)
  • number data (constants)
  • formulas (mathematical equations that do all the work)
  • Formulas are entries that have an equation that calculates the value to display. DO NOT type in the numbers; instead, type in the equation. This equation will be updated upon the change or entry of any data that is referenced in the equation. In our first example, the solution was $252.61
    This was NOT typed into the keyboard. The formula that was typed into the spreadsheet was:
    =PMT(C4/12,C5,-C3)

    C4 (annual interest rate) was divided by 12 because there are 12 months in a year. Dividing by 12 will give us the interest rate for the payment period - in this case a payment period of one month.

    It is also important to type in the reference to the constants instead of the constants. Had I entered =PMT(.096/12,60,-12000) my formula would only work for that particular set of data. I could change the months above and the payment would not change. Remember to enter the cell where the data is stored and NOT the data itself.

    Formulas are mathematical equations. There is a list of the functions available within Excel under the menu INSERT down to Function.

    Formulas OR Functions MUST BEGIN with an equal sign (=).

    Again, we use formulas to CALCULATE a value to be displayed.

  • This example brought by Brad James