Excel 2019 For Dummies

Greg Harvey

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119513346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Aplicaciones de escritorio

The bestselling Excel book on the market — now in a new edition covering the latest version of Excel!

Excel is the spreadsheet and data analysis tool of choice for people across the globe who utilize the Microsoft Office suite to make their work and personal lives easier. It is estimated that 1 in 7 people on the planet use Microsoft Office! If you're one of them, and want to get up to speed on the latest changes in Excel, you've come to the right place.

Excel 2019 For Dummies has been updated to reflect the major changes and features made to Excel and covers everything you need to know to perform any spreadsheet task at hand. It includes information on creating and editing worksheets, formatting cells, entering formulas, creating and editing charts, inserting graphs, designing database forms, adding database records, using seek-and-find options, printing, adding hyperlinksto worksheets, saving worksheets as web pages, adding existing worksheet data to an existing webpage, pivot tables, pivot charts, formulas and functions, Excel data analysis, sending worksheets via e-mail, and so much more!

• Get to know the new Excel interface
• Become a pro at the spreadsheet and data analysis tool that's available as part of the Microsoft Office suite
• Find time-tested and trusted advice from bestselling author and expert Greg Harvey
• Use Excel to streamline your processes and make your work life easier than ever before

Written by a bestselling author and seasoned educator, Excel 2019 For Dummies makes it easier than ever to get everything out of this powerful data tool.

Part 1

Getting Started with Excel 2019

IN THIS PART …

Explore the Excel user interface and the Ribbon.

Make sense of the most commonly used tabs and command buttons.

Customize the Quick Access toolbar.

Start (and stop) Excel 2019.

Get online help with the Help tab and with the Tell Me feature in Excel 2019.

Become familiar with the prominent buttons and boxes for entering spreadsheet data.

Save your work and recover a lost workbook if disaster strikes.

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Chapter 1

The Excel 2019 User Experience

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting familiar with the Excel 2019 program window and Backstage view

Selecting commands from the Ribbon

Customizing the Quick Access toolbar

Starting Excel 2019

Surfing an Excel 2019 worksheet and workbook

Getting things done with the Tell Me feature

Excel 2019, like Excel 2016, 2013, 2010, and 2007 before it, relies upon a single strip at the top of the worksheet called the Ribbon that puts the bulk of the Excel commands you use at your fingertips at all times.

Add to the Ribbon a File tab and a Quick Access toolbar — along with a few remaining task panes (Help, Clipboard, Clip Art, and Research, to name a few) — and you end up with the handiest way to crunch your numbers, produce and print polished financial reports, as well as organize and chart your data. In other words, to do all the wonderful things for which you rely on Excel.

Best of all, the Excel 2019 user interface includes all sorts of graphical elements that make working on spreadsheets a lot faster and a great deal easier. Foremost is Live Preview, which shows you how your actual worksheet data would appear in a particular font, table formatting, and so on before you actually select it. This Live Preview extends to the new Quick Analysis and Recommended PivotTables and Recommended Charts commands to enable you to preview your data in various formats before you apply them.

Additionally, Excel 2019 supports a Page Layout View that displays rulers and margins along with headers and footers for every worksheet with a Zoom slider at the bottom of the screen that enables you to zoom in and out on the spreadsheet data instantly. Finally, Excel 2019 is full of pop-up galleries that make spreadsheet formatting and charting a real breeze, especially in tandem with Live Preview.

Excel’s Ribbon User Interface

When you launch Excel 2019, the Start screen similar to the one shown in Figure 1-1 opens. Here you can start a new blank workbook by clicking the Blank workbook template, or you can select any of the other templates shown as the basis for your new spreadsheet. If none of the templates shown in the Start screen suits your needs, you can search for templates online. After you’ve worked with Excel for some time, the Start screen also displays a list of recently opened workbooks that you can reopen for further editing or printing.

FIGURE 1-1: The Excel 2019 Start screen enables you to open a new blank workbook or a recently opened workbook, or find a template to use as the basis for a new workbook.

When you select the Blank workbook template from the Excel 2019 Start screen, the program opens an initial worksheet (named Sheet1) in a new workbook file (named Book1) inside a program window like the one shown in Figure 1-2.

FIGURE 1-2: The Excel 2019 program window that appears immediately after selecting the Blank Workbook template in the opening screen.

The Excel program window containing this worksheet of the workbook contains the following components:

• File button that when clicked opens the Backstage view — a menu on the left that contains all the document- and file-related commands, including Info, New, Open (selected by default when you first launch Excel), Save, Save As, Print, Share, Export, Publish, and Close. Additionally, at the bottom, there’s an Account option with User and Product information and an Options item that enables you to change many of Excel’s default settings. Note that you can press Esc to exit the Backstage view and return to the normal worksheet view.
• Customizable Quick Access toolbar that contains buttons you can click to perform common tasks, such as manually saving your work and undoing and redoing edits. This toolbar is on the left side and begins with the Save button in a new worksheet. The deactivated AutoSave button to its immediate left is automatically turned on after you manually save a workbook file in the cloud on OneDrive or a SharePoint website.
• Ribbon that consists of a series of tabs, ranging from Home through Help. The tabs on the Ribbon contains the bulk of the Excel.
• Formula bar that displays the address of the current cell along with the contents of that cell.
• Worksheet area that contains the cells of the worksheet identified by column headings using letters along the top and row headings using numbers along the left edge; tabs for switching to a new worksheet; a horizontal scroll bar to move left and right through the sheet; and a vertical scroll bar to move up and down through the sheet.
• Status bar that keeps you informed of the program’s current mode and any special keys you engage and enables you to select a new worksheet view and to zoom in and out on the worksheet.

Going Backstage

To the immediate left of the Home tab on the Ribbon right below the AutoSave button and Quick Access toolbar, you find the File button.

When you select File, the Backstage view opens. This view contains a menu similar to the one shown in Figure 1-3. When you open the Backstage view with the Info option selected (Alt+FI), Excel displays at-a-glance stats about the workbook file you have open and active in the program.

FIGURE 1-3: Open Backstage view to get at-a-glance information about the current file, access all file-related commands, and modify the program options.

This information panel is divided into two panes. The pane on the left contains large buttons that enable you to modify the workbook’s protection status, check the document before publishing, manage its versions, and determine which worksheets in the file are shown when the Excel workbook file is viewed in a web browser. The pane on the right contains a list of fields detailing the workbook’s various document Properties, some of which you can change (such as Title, Tags, Categories, Author, and Last Modified By), and many of which you can’t (such as Size, Last Modified, Created, and so forth).

Below the Info option, you find the commands (New, Open, Save, Save As, Save as Adobe PDF, Print, Share, Export, Publish, and Close) that you commonly need for working with Excel workbook files. Near the bottom, the File tab contains an Account option that, when selected, displays an Account panel in the Backstage view. This panel displays user, connection, and Microsoft Office account information. Below the Account menu item, you find options to give Microsoft feedback about Excel 2019 as well as options that you can select to change the program’s many default settings.

Select the Open option to open an Excel workbook you’ve previously worked on for more editing. When you select Open, Excel displays a panel with a list of all the workbook files recently opened in the program. To re-open a particular file for editing, all you do is click its filename in this list.

To close the Backstage view and return to the normal worksheet view, you select the Back button at the very top of the menu or simply press Esc on your keyboard.

Using the Excel Ribbon

The Ribbon (shown in Figure 1-4) groups the most commonly used options needed to perform particular types of Excel tasks.

FIGURE 1-4: Excel’s Ribbon consists of a series of tabs containing command buttons arranged into different groups.

To do this, the Ribbon uses the following components:...