Thread: Excel

Lots of people have a copy of Microsoft Excel on their computer but have never used it. Spreadsheets sound like they are only useful for accountants, but this isn't really true. In fact, Excel can be very useful in so many areas. Families can use it to budget for home improvements, control phone bills, or simply to convert grammes to ounces as we'll show here. Text in blue below is the exact text to type into cells as we proceed step by step.

Getting started
Here's an example of using Excel to figure out the cost of fitting a fully tiled bathroom that will have a shower, basin and toilet. We'll give examples using the latest version of Excel, 2007, first, then explain if any tasks are different using older versions. Open Excel and click the Home tab if it's not on top.

In cells AI, BI, and CI enter Trade, Item, and Price. Underneath column B, in any order, enter every item needed for the job, such as a basin, toilet and tiles, then enter the cost of each alongside it in Column C. Beside each of these items in column A, enter either fixtures, accessories, plumbing, electrical or building work. Save the file.



A simple table of data like this is called a Table in Excel 2007 and a List in earlier versions. The column headings are known as Fields. The details in each row are called Records. To separate the Field Names from the rest of the List, we'll change the way they look. Click the mouse on cell Al and, holding it down, move the cursor over to cell CI before releasing it. This will select cells AI, BI and Cl. Press the Control and B keys together to make the text bold, then click the down arrow by the Font Color tool and pick a colour.