Sukkur Institute of Business Administration University

Department of Media and Communication

Computer Skills

Lab # 07: To become familiar with MS-Excel

Instructor: Engr. Zainab Umair Kamangar

Lab Report Rubrics Total

(Add the points in each column, then add across the bottom row to find the total Marks
score)
S.No Criterion 0.5 0.25 0.125
1 Accuracy  Desired output  Minor  Critical
mistakes mistakes
2 Timing  Submitted within the  1 day late  More than 1
given time day late

Submission Profile

Name: Submission date (dd/mm/yy):

Enrollment ID: Receiving authority name and signature:

Comments: __________________________________________________________________________

Instructor Signature

Note: Submit this lab hand-out in the next lab with attached solved activities and exercises

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Lab Learning Objectives:
➢ To become familiar with MS-Excel.
➢ Understanding the Ribbon
➢ Understanding the worksheet
➢ Customization Microsoft Excel Environment
➢ Important Excel shortcuts
➢ Understanding and working with arithmetic operations in MS-Excel.

Procedure:

What is Microsoft Excel?

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program used to record and analyze numerical and statistical data.
Microsoft Excel provides multiple features to perform various operations like calculations, pivot tables,
graph tools, macro programming, etc. It is compatible with multiple OS like Windows, macOS, Android
and iOS.

An Excel spreadsheet can be understood as a collection of columns and rows that form a table.
Alphabetical letters are usually assigned to columns, and numbers are usually assigned to rows. The point
where a column and a row meet is called a cell. The address of a cell is given by the letter representing the
column and the number representing a row.

Why Should I Learn Microsoft Excel?

We all deal with numbers in one way or the other. We all have daily expenses which we pay for from the
monthly income that we earn. For one to spend wisely, they will need to know their income vs.
expenditure. Microsoft Excel comes in handy when we want to record, analyze and store such numeric
data. Let’s illustrate this using the following image.

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Where can I get Microsoft Excel?

There are number of ways in which you can get Microsoft Excel. You can buy it from a hardware
computer shop that also sells software. Microsoft Excel is part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs.
Alternatively, you can download it from the Microsoft website but you will have to buy the license key.

How to Open Microsoft Excel?

Running Excel is not different from running any other Windows program. If you are running Windows
with a GUI like (Windows XP, Vista, and 7) follow the following steps.

• Click on start menu

• Point to all programs
• Point to Microsoft Excel
• Click on Microsoft Excel

Alternatively, you can also open it from the start menu if it has been added there. You can also open it
from the desktop shortcut if you have created one.

For this tutorial, we will be working with Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Excel 2013. Follow the following
steps to run Excel on Windows 8.1

• Click on start menu

• Search for Excel N.B. even before you even typing, all programs starting with what you have
typed will be listed.
• Click on Microsoft Excel

The following image shows you how to do this

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Understanding the Ribbon
The ribbon provides shortcuts to commands in Excel. A command is an action that the user performs. An
example of a command is creating a new document, printing a documenting, etc. The image below shows
the ribbon used in Excel 2013.

Ribbon components explained

Ribbon start button – it is used to access commands i.e. creating new documents, saving existing work,
printing, accessing the options for customizing Excel, etc.

Ribbon tabs – the tabs are used to group similar commands together. The home tab is used for basic
commands such as formatting the data to make it more presentable, sorting and finding specific data
within the spreadsheet.

Ribbon bar – the bars are used to group similar commands together. As an example, the Alignment
ribbon bar is used to group all the commands that are used to align data together.

Understanding the worksheet (Rows and Columns, Sheets, Workbooks)

A worksheet is a collection of rows and columns. When a row and a column meet, they form a cell.
Cells are used to record data. Each cell is uniquely identified using a cell address. Columns are usually
labelled with letters while rows are usually numbers.

A workbook is a collection of worksheets. By default, a workbook has three cells in Excel. You can
delete or add more sheets to suit your requirements. By default, the sheets are named Sheet1, Sheet2 and
so on and so forth. You can rename the sheet names to more meaningful names i.e. Daily Expenses,
Monthly Budget, etc.

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Customization Microsoft Excel Environment
Personally, I like the black colour, so my excel theme looks blackish. Your favourite colour could be blue,
and you too can make your theme colour look blue-like. If you are not a programmer, you may not want
to include ribbon tabs i.e. developer. All this is made possible via customizations. In this sub-section, we
are going to look at;

• Customization the ribbon

• Setting the colour theme
• Settings for formulas
• Proofing settings
• Save settings

Customization of ribbon

The above image shows the default ribbon in Excel 2013. Let’s start with customization the ribbon,
suppose you do not wish to see some of the tabs on the ribbon, or you would like to add some tabs that are
missing such as the developer tab. You can use the options window to achieve this.

• Click on the ribbon start button

• Select options from the drop down menu. You should be able to see an Excel Options dialog
window
• Select the customize ribbon option from the left-hand side panel as shown below

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 • On your right-hand side, remove the check marks from the tabs that you do not wish to see on the
ribbon. For this example, we have removed Page Layout, Review, and View tab.
• Click on the “OK” button when you are done.

Your ribbon will look as follows

Adding custom tabs to the ribbon

You can also add your own tab, give it a custom name and assign commands to it. Let’s add a tab to the
ribbon with the text Guru99

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 1. Right click on the ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon. The dialogue window shown above
will appear
2. Click on new tab button as illustrated in the animated image below
3. Select the newly created tab
4. Click on Rename button
5. Give it a name of Guru99
6. Select the New Group (Custom) under Guru99 tab as shown in the image below
7. Click on Rename button and give it a name of My Commands
8. Let’s now add commands to my ribbon bar
9. The commands are listed on the middle panel
10. Select All chart types command and click on Add button
11. Click on OK

Your ribbon will look as follows

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Setting the colour theme
To set the color-theme for your Excel sheet you have to go to Excel ribbon, and click on à File àOption
command. It will open a window where you have to follow the following steps.

1. The general tab on the left-hand panel will be selected by default.

2. Look for colour scheme under General options for working with Excel
3. Click on the colour scheme drop-down list and select the desired colour
4. Click on OK button

Settings for formulas

This option allows you to define how Excel behaves when you are working with formulas. You can
use it to set options i.e. autocomplete when entering formulas, change the cell referencing style and use
numbers for both columns and rows and other options.

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If you want to activate an option, click on its check box. If you want to deactivate an option, remove the
mark from the checkbox. You can this option from the Options dialogue window under formulas tab from
the left-hand side panel

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Proofing settings

This option manipulates the entered text entered into excel. It allows setting options such as the
dictionary language that should be used when checking for wrong spellings, suggestions from the
dictionary, etc. You can this option from the options dialogue window under the proofing tab from the
left-hand side panel

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Save settings

This option allows you to define the default file format when saving files, enable auto recovery in
case your computer goes off before you could save your work, etc. You can use this option from the
Options dialogue window under save tab from the left-hand side panel

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Important Excel shortcuts
Ctrl + P used to open the print dialogue window

Ctrl + N creates a new workbook

Ctrl + S saves the current workbook

Ctrl + C copy contents of current select

Ctrl + V paste data from the clipboard

SHIFT + F3 displays the function insert dialog window

SHIFT + F11 Creates a new worksheet

F2 Check formula and cell range covered

Best Practices when working with Microsoft Excel

1. Save workbooks with backward compatibility in mind. If you are not using the latest features in
higher versions of Excel, you should save your files in 2003 *.xls format for backwards
compatibility
2. Use description names for columns and worksheets in a workbook
3. Avoid working with complex formulas with many variables. Try to break them down into
small managed results that you can use to build on
4. Use built-in functions whenever you can instead of writing your own formulas

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How To Perform Arithmetic Operations in Excel
In this tutorial, we are going to perform basic arithmetic operations i.e. addition, subtraction, division and
multiplication. The following table shows the data that we will work with and the results that we should
expect.

S/N ARITHMETIC OPERATOR FIRST NUMBER SECOND NUMBER RESULT

1 Addition (+) 13 3 16

2 Subtraction (-) 21 9 12

3 Division (/) 33 12 2.75

4 Multiplication (*) 7 3 21

Let’s now use Microsoft excel to achieve the above results

Step 1) Create an Excel Sheet and Enter the Data

Create a folder on your computer in my documents folder and name it Excel Labs.

For this tutorial, we will be using Microsoft Excel 2013. The good news is even if you have Microsoft
Excel 2007 or 2010, you will still be able to follow the tutorial and get the same result.

Open Excel. You will get a window similar to the one shown below. The outlook of Excel will depend on
your version.

• Enter the data in your worksheet as shown in the image above.

• We will now perform the calculations using the respective arithmetic operators. When performing
calculations in Excel, you should always start with the equal (=) sign.
• Let’s start with the one for addition. Write the following formula in E2 Excel (Result column)
• =C2+D2

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HERE,

• “=” tells Excel to evaluate whatever follows after the equal sign
• “C2” is the cell address of the first number given by C representing the column letter and 2
representing the row number
• “D2” is the cell address of the second number given by D representing the column letter and 2
representing the row number

Press enter key on the keyboard when done. You should get 16 as the result.

Exercise

1. Using the knowledge gained in the above example and using the same data, try to write the
formulas for subtraction, division, and multiplication.

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