For Excel 2000 click on Start | Programs | Microsoft Excel or for Excel XP 2002/2003 click on Start | All Programs | Microsoft Word and a blank document opens were you may enter information.

Screen Layout

Below are three toolbars located at the top of the Excel screen. These may be used for shortcuts in many of the activities. If you don't see one of the toolbars, select View | Toolbars and select the missing toolbar.

Menu bar - click on any of the words in this row to see a menu of options in that category - File and Edit are the most commonly used (saving, opening files, copying, and pasting).

Standard toolbar - icons in this row provide shortcuts to many tasks accessible through the menu bar (opening, printing, cutting, pasting) as well as handy functions (AutoSum, chart wizard, etc.).

Formatting toolbar - this row controls the format of text in cells (font, font size, style, color, borders, alignments).

Some important spreadsheet terms

Columns - the vertical divisions in the spreadsheet are called columns and are headed by letters. Excel 2000/XP has 256 columns beginning with A and ending with IV.

Rows - the horizontal divisions in the spreadsheet are called rows and are headed by numbers. Excel 2000/XP has 65,536 rows.

Cells - each individual space in the spreadsheet is called a cell. Cells can contain text, numbers, or both. Each cell has an address such as A1 or G6. There are 16,777,216 cells in each Excel sheet.

Choose a title for your 2002 budget and type it in cell A1.

• Mortgage
• Car Payment
• Gas Bill
• Electricity Bill
• Water Bill

Be sure you begin with cell A3. To move down the A column, either use the Enter key or the down arrow on your keyboard. You may also use your mouse to click on the cell you wish to fill. To move horizontally, use the Tab key or the right arrow key.

Cells B2-M2 will contain the months of the year. You could type each month, but let's use a shortcut. Type January in cell B2? Do you see a small square in the lower right corner of cell B2? Point at this square - the white cross becomes a black plus sign.

Click and drag this small square across the row to cell M2. Release. Did January through December appear in the cells?

Excel recognized the word January as the beginning of a sequence. Will it also work with numbers? Move to cell A15. Begin a vertical numerical list by placing the number 1 in cell A15. Try using the same method you used for the months to create a numerical list of 1-10. Does it work? If not, what could you do to make it work?

Answer: No. You must first show a sequence! Enter 1 in A15 and 2 in A16. Highlight both cells. Click and drag on the small square in the lower right corner of cell A16. Drag to A24 and release.

The months of the year would look better in boldface. To make the word January bold, click in cell B2, then click the letter B on the formatting toolbar. You could use this method to make the rest of the months bold, but can you think of a more efficient method? Make the headings in cells A3 through A7 bold, too.

Answer: Highlight the remaining months and click on the letter B on the formatting toolbar.

To change font size, be sure the months of the year are selected. Change the font size from the default of 10 to 12. Can you do the same for the data in cells A3 through A7?

Answer: Highlight the cells you wish to change. Click on the Font Size dropdown and select 12.

By increasing the font size and making the typeface bold, we have made some of the column and row headings too wide for their cells. There are several methods of adjusting cells width. Move your white cross to the line separating columns A and B. The white cross turns into a bi-directional horizontal arrow with a vertical divider. Double-click to widen the column to exact fit.

Try another method. Move your white cross to the line separating columns B and C. Click and drag this line to the right to widen column B. This is a simple method, but what if you want all of the columns to be the same width? This method would be tedious. To adjust the width of multiple columns simultaneously, highlight the columns you wish to alter, then select Format | Column | Width. Enter a value of 14, then click on OK.

Each month is aligned along the left edge of its cell. Would these column headings look better centered in the middle of the cell? Select row 2, by clicking on the 2 at the beginning of the row, then click on the center alignment button on the formatting toolbar (notice also the option for right alignment and the default setting of left alignment for text).

The title of your spreadsheet is currently in the upper left corner. Would you like to center it? You could type it in cell F1 or G1, but there is a better way. Highlight cells A1 though M1. Click on the Merge and Center button on the formatting toolbar (just to the right of the alignment buttons). This merges the cells in row 1 and automatically places your text in the center. You might then make the title bold and change the font size to 14.

Enter the following amounts in the appropriate cells to begin the budget spreadsheet:

Select cell A10. Type the word "Total" in the cell. Move to cell B10. This cell will show the total amount paid in January for the five expenses listed above it. There are several ways to have Excel calculate the sum of the values in cells B3 through B7. One method is to type the following in cell B10: =B3+B4+B5+B6+B7.

However, there is a better method. Select cell B10. Click on the AutoSum button on the Standard Toolbar. The AutoSum button shows an uppercase sigma.

A box appears around cells B3 through B9. Use your mouse to select only cells B3 though B7, then press Enter on your keyboard. Use the automatic copy feature to calculate the sums in the rest of the columns.

Hint: Click on B10 and drag to M10. This copies the formula!

Select cell O2. Type "Average". Select cell O3. In cells O3 through O7, you want to find the average paid for each bill. Again, there are several ways to accomplish this. The method we will use is the Paste Function feature. Click on the Insert Function button (Excel XP) or the Paste Function button (Excel 2000).

This feature allows you to choose a mathematical function to enter in a cell. Select the function "Average" from the right-hand column.

Click on OK. A dialog box appears. The automatic setting should be B3:N3, indicating Excel will find the average of cells B3 through N3. Click in this space and change the N3 to M3 since we do not want the empty cell N3 to be included in the average.

Click on OK. Use the automatic copy feature to place averages in cells O4 through O10.

Note: #DIV/0! in O8 and O9 indicates division by 0 is undefined. I would delete those.

Note: To review the formulas and their ranges used, press Ctrl - `.

Cells O5 and O10 display more than two decimal places. To adjust this, select cells O5 through O10, then click on the Decrease Decimal button on the Formatting Toolbar.

Suppose you wish to add another bill to your budget - your MasterCard Bill for instance. There is space in rows 8 and 9 for more data, but to maintain a space between the data and the totals, you decide to insert a new row. To do this, select row 8 by clicking on the 8 at the far left of the screen. Select Insert | Rows. A new row is added. New rows are added above the selected row. New columns are added to the left of a selected column.

Go ahead and add the MasterCard Bill. Oops! The text is too big for the column. How can you make the column fit the text?

Before printing a spreadsheet, you may wish to place borders around some or all of the cells. The default setting in Excel 2000/XP includes no borders around any cells. Highlight cells A1 through O12. Select Format | Cells. Click on the Borders tab. In the dialog box, you can select borders around the entire selected area, around each cell, or only along certain edges. You decide to place a border around the A1:O12 block, but not to place borders around individual cells. Click OK.

To view how the spreadsheet will appear when printed, click on the Print Preview button on the Standard Toolbar. Notice that the border appears only around the outside, as specified, but that the budget does not fit on a single sheet of paper.

In the Print Preview mode, click on Setup at the top of the screen. The dialog box that appears includes a Scaling section. In this section, you may select Fit to to fit your spreadsheet to one page.

Select this feature, and click on OK. Your spreadsheet is automatically reduced in size to fit one sheet of paper.

Note: You may prefer Landscape orientation rather than Portrait.

Highlight the cells A3 through B8. Click on the Chart Wizard button in the Toolbar. Select Pie from the chart options on the left. Name the Chart "2002 Budget" and click on Next and OK to accept all defaults. Click on Finish to complete the chart of your budget. Your pie chart appears on your excel spreadsheet. A picture is worth a thousand words!