Datasheet
12
1
2
2
1
Enter Numbers
1 Click in a cell.
2 Type the number.
3 Press Enter.
Excel enters the number and
then moves down to the next
cell.
Alternatively, you can click
on the formula bar.
Enter Text
1 Click in a cell.
2 Type the text.
3 Press Enter.
Excel enters the text and then
moves down to the next cell.
Alternatively, you can click
Enter (
) — the check mark
on the formula bar.
Enter Data
W
orksheets divide information into rows and
columns of data. People often use worksheets
to calculate financial, statistical, or engineering
data. Microsoft Excel is an electronic worksheet. You can
use it to enter, display, manipulate, analyze, and print the
information you organize into rows and columns.
Each Excel worksheet has more than 1 million rows and
more than 16,000 columns. Excel labels each row in
numerical order, starting with 1. Excel labels each column
in alphabetical order, starting with A. When Excel reaches
the letter Z, it begins ordering with AA, AB, AC, and so
on. You refer to the intersection of a row and column as a
cell. The intersection of a row and column also forms the
cell name. For example, you refer to the first row in
column A as cell A1 and the seventh row in column C as
cell C7. When using Excel, you enter your data into
worksheet cells.
To move to a cell, move your mouse pointer to the cell
and then click in it. The cell becomes the active cell and
Excel surrounds it with a black border. Once in a cell, you
can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move up,
down, left, and right. You can enter text, numbers, dates,
and formulas into cells.
Alphabetic characters and numerical data you do not use
in mathematical calculations are text. Excel considers any
sequence of characters that contains a letter text. By
default, Excel considers all numerical data numbers. If
you wish to enter numerical data as text, precede your
entry with an apostrophe.
As you type, the data you enter into a cell appears on the
formula bar. You can click Enter — the check mark on the
formula bar — or you can press the Enter key to enter
your data into a cell.
Enter
Data
03_591604-ch01.indd 1203_591604-ch01.indd 12 5/25/10 12:34 PM5/25/10 12:34 PM