The Excel window: workbooks, sheets and cells

Grades in a class register, a shop's sales report, a family's monthly budget — all of these are tables made of rows and columns. Microsoft Excel was built for exactly such tables: it stores numbers, calculates with them and turns the results into charts. Let's start by getting to know its window.

Parts of the Excel window

When you open Excel and choose Blank workbook, you see a big grid of cells. Commands are at the top, sheets at the bottom. These are the main parts:

• Ribbon — the command area at the top. It is divided into tabs: File, Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, View. Inside each tab, commands are arranged in groups, e.g. Home › Font.
• Search box — the Search field in the title bar (Alt+Q). If you don't know where a command is, type its name and Excel finds it.
• Name Box — below the ribbon on the left. It shows the address of the active cell; type H20 there and press Enter to jump straight to that cell.
• Formula bar — to the right of the Name Box. It shows the real content of the active cell, including a formula.
• Column headings and row numbers — columns are labelled with letters (A, B, C…), rows with numbers (1, 2, 3…).
• Sheet tabs — at the bottom left (Sheet1…). The + button next to them adds a new sheet.
• Status bar — at the very bottom. It shows the sum, average and count of the selected numbers, plus the zoom slider.

Workbook, worksheet and cell

The selected cell is the active cell — you recognise it by its green border. A rectangular block of neighbouring cells is a range, written with a colon: B2:D6 means every cell from B2 to D6. One worksheet has 16,384 columns (A to XFD) and 1,048,576 rows, so you will never run out of space.

Sheets and saving your file

1. 1
   Create a new workbook

   Open Excel and choose Blank workbook (or File › New › Blank workbook). The workbook opens with one sheet called Sheet1.

2. 2
   Rename a sheet and add another

   Double-click the Sheet1 tab, type a name such as “January” and press Enter. To add a sheet, click the + button next to the tabs or press Shift+F11.

3. 3
   Save the file for the first time

   Press Ctrl+S, choose a location (This PC or OneDrive), type a file name and click Save. Excel saves the file in .xlsx format.

4. 4
   Save often

   Once the file has a name, Ctrl+S simply stores your changes. If the file is on OneDrive, the AutoSave switch in the top-left corner saves every change automatically.