PhD

Relative cell references and absolute cell references

Cell references are used in almost all functions and they interact differently with the Auto-fill handle depending on what type of reference you have used:

Excel - Find and Replace

Find and/or replace is a powerful feature that allows you to search for a text string within your data set. It will show you all of the times that Excel can see the text string in your document, allowing you to be taken to the next word by clicking the 'next' button. If you then wish to replace a text string with your own input, en masse or individually.

Basic functions formulae (SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX & MIN)

This page will cover the 5 basic functions found in the auto-sum drop-down menu:

• SUM

• AVERAGE

• COUNT NUMBERS

• MAX

• MIN

What is a Mathematical operator?

This page will guide you through using Excel to create basic mathematical operations. This is very similar to creating a function or formula except that we are not using the function's operative such as (=Sum) or (=Average) or any of the other function operative.

If we wanted the sub-total for a given range we can use the function operative (SUM):

=Sum(A1:A10)

Wrap Text & Merge and Centre

Creating a Table

When you input data into Excel it is initially a 'data array' and although it is perfectly fine to leave data in this format it is sometimes easier or better to convert it to Table for the following reasons;

Freeze Panes

Freeze Panes can be used to lock specific columns or rows in place so that you may see them where-ever you are within the data. 

In the view tab of the ribbon you will find the "freeze panes" drop down menu:

Number Formatting in Excel

Excel can handle lots of different format types of numbers, but you must regularly choose what type of number format you wish to be expressed on the cells containing those numbers. If you don't, you may suffer problem when calculating functions or expressing the data in a specific way.

Examples:

• Date
• Time
• Percentage
• Monetary value
• fraction
• text

Resizing Columns and Rows in Excel

There are several ways to re-size a column or row, each has a specific use and will benefit you in different ways depending on what you wish to accomplish.

Excel Quick Selection Techniques

In Excel to highlight/select data you can "click and drag" around the data to select it, there are in fact several different ways you can highlight/select data a lot faster or more efficiently. Especially when you have large amounts of data. 

I shall outline the selection methods you can use here: