EXCEL Lessons

EXCEL is heavily used throughout this course. This page provides links to training materials and their descriptions for people not having much familiarity with EXCEL. Page designed & maintained by Humaira Abro. Write to her with suggestions and comments at: humairaabro@gmail.com

QUICK START GUIDE: Download ONE Lesson on Basic Concepts of EXCEL -- these will suffice to get you started for the course. Do the material below later to get comfortable with basic operations which will be needed as you progress in the course.

Before we move to detailed lessons on excel, here are some basic lessons, devised by Respected Dr. Asad Zaman for the Econometrics/ Statistics Course, aimed at helping students in working on excel. Every lesson is followed by questions for self-assessment by every student.

There are three PDF text files in which you can learn the basic things, here are the topics that are included in these files.

First Lesson contains the topics;

• • Moving from cell to cell

  • Constants

  • Formatting constants

  • Displaying numbers with a specified category and format

  • Entering a sequence of numbers

  • Editing lists

  • Creating an excel chart using the chart wizard

Lesson 2 basically talks about formulae. In this lesson you will get to know about;

• • Writing a simple formula

  • Breaking down the formula

  • Cell referencing

  • Editing formulas

  • Built in functions in excel and their usage

Lesson 3 deals with;

• • Different methods of creating a list of function values

  • Creating a plot of function values

  • Learning properties of Quadratics from plots

  • Roots, Maxima, and Minima and finding them numerically

  • Using solver to find roots

If you are eager to learn statistics but you do not know the basic Excel, you have arrived at the right place. Here you will learn all the things that are included in excel from opening excel to working on forms and macros. These are not only video lectures but a complete course that let you practice excel at home, you can download pdf file of each video reviewing what is discussed in the video lecture.

These lectures are taken from one website, among many different websites this website has complete guide from begining to advance skills of Excel. The purpose of this page is to provide you a complete guide to Excel. In this regard, all the topics are mentioned here to save your time, which means that if you don't know a topic you can go to that topic directly.

There are seven different areas in the essential skills, if you practice them it would be enough for you. Each topic contains a short video, which will make your concept clear. Make sure you practice it on your computer.

Basic Skills:

• How to open excel

• Understand different windows of excel

• Some short keys and recognition of columns and rows

• Saving excel file

• Manage different worksheets in one excel file

• Recover unsaved draft file

• Recover earlier version of excel file

• Use the ribbon

• Ribbon components

• Understand and customize quick access toolbar

  • Using mini toolbars and key tips

• Use full screen view

• How to use help system

Doing Useful Work with Excel

• Enter text and numbers into a worksheet

• Create new workbook and view two workbooks at same time

• Use autosum

• Understand smart tags

• Select adjacent and non adjacent rows and columns

• Autoselect a range of cells

• Select non-contiguous cell ranges and view summary information

• Use Autosum to sum non-contiguous range

• Calculate averages with autosum

• Create your own formula

• Different functions using formula autocomplete

• Autofill for text and numeric series

  • Autofill to adjust formula

• Autofill options

• Use Zoom control

• Print a worksheet

Taking your skills to next level

• Insert and delete rows and columns

• Use autocomplete and fill data from adjacent cells

• Transpose a range

• Use the multiple item clipboard

• Insert cell comments

• Understand absolute and relative cell references

• Create a template

• Freeze columns and rows

• Split the window into multiple panes

• Check spelling

Give professional look to your worksheets

• Format dates

• Format numbers using built-in number formats

• Horizontally align the contents of cells

• Merge cells, wrap texts, and expand/ collapse the formula bar

• Understand themes

• Use cell styles and change themes

• Add color and gradient effects to cells

• Add borders and lines

• Create your own custom theme

• Create your own custom cell style

• Use simple conditional formatting

• Manage multiple conditional formats using the rules manager

• Bring data alive with visualization

• Create a formula driven conditional format

• Insert a sparkline into a range of cells

• Apply a common vertical axis and formating to a sparkline group

• Apply a date axis to a sparkline group and format a single sparkline

• Use a fromat painter

• Rotate text

Charts and Graphics

• Create a simple chart with two clicks

• Change a chart layout and add a data table

• Format chart element fills and borders

• Format 3-D element and align text

• Move, resize, and delete chart elements

• Change a chart's source data

• Assign non-contiguous source data by click and drag

• Change source data using the select data source dialog tools

• Chart non-contiguous source data by hiding rows and columns

• Create a chart with numerical axis

• Deal with empty data points

• Add data labels to a chart

• Add gridlines and scale axes

• Emphasize data by manipulating pie charts

• Create a chart with two verticle axis

• Create a combination chart containing different chart types

• Add a trend line

• Switch chart rows/colums and add a gradient fill

• Create your own chart template

A special trick for creating histograms within an X-Y chart.

Working with multiple worksheets and workbooks

• View two windows side by side and perform synchronous scrolling

• Duplicate worksheets within a workbook

• Move and copy worksheets from one workbook to another

• Hide and unhide worksheets

• Create cross worksheet formulas

• Understand worksheet groups

• Use "find and replace"

Printing your work

• Print preview and paper orientation

• Use paper layout view to adjust margins

• Use page setup to set margins more precisely and center the worksheet

• Set paper size and scale

• Insert, delete and preview page breaks

• Adjust page breaks using page break preview

• Add auto-header and auto-footer and set the starting page number

• Add custom headers and footers

• Specify different headers and footers for the first, even, and odd pages

• Print only part of a worksheet

• Add row and column data labels and gridlines to printed output

• Print several selected worksheets and change the page order

• Suppress error messages in printouts

With this, the section of Necessary things you need to know, ends. If you want to go more deeper and want to learn advance excel skills, you may learn it here.