Excel 2016 Bible

John Walkenbach

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781119067504
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Desktop Applications
• Index: Computer Science

The complete guide to Excel 2016, from Mr. Spreadsheet himself

Whether you are just starting out or an Excel novice, the Excel 2016 Bible is your comprehensive, go-to guide for all your Excel 2016 needs. Whether you use Excel at work or at home, you will be guided through the powerful new features and capabilities by expert author and Excel Guru John Walkenbach to take full advantage of what the updated version offers. Learn to incorporate templates, implement formulas, create pivot tables, analyze data, and much more.

Navigate this powerful tool for business, home management, technical work, and much more with the only resource you need, Excel 2016 Bible.

• Create functional spreadsheets that work
• Master formulas, formatting, pivot tables, and more
• Get acquainted with Excel 2016's new features and tools
• Customize downloadable templates and worksheets

Whether you need a walkthrough tutorial or an easy-to-navigate desk reference, the Excel 2016 Bible has you covered with complete coverage and clear expert guidance.

Part I
Getting Started with Excel

The chapters in this part are intended to provide essential background information for working with Excel. Here, you'll see how to make use of the basic features that are required for every Excel user. If you've used Excel (or even a different spreadsheet program) in the past, much of this information may seem like review. Even so, it's likely that you'll find quite a few tricks and techniques in these chapters.

IN THIS PART

1. Chapter 1
   Introducing Excel
2. Chapter 2
   Entering and Editing Worksheet Data
3. Chapter 3
   Essential Worksheet Operations
4. Chapter 4
   Working with Cells and Ranges
5. Chapter 5
   Introducing Tables
6. Chapter 6
   Worksheet Formatting
7. Chapter 7
   Understanding Excel Files
8. Chapter 8
   Using and Creating Templates
9. Chapter 9
   Printing Your Work

Chapter 1
Introducing Excel

IN THIS CHAPTER

1. Understanding what Excel is used for
2. Looking at what's new in Excel 2016
3. Learning the parts of an Excel window
4. Introducing the Ribbon, shortcut menus, dialog boxes, and task panes
5. Navigating Excel worksheets
6. Introducing Excel with a step-by-step hands-on session

This chapter is an introductory overview of Excel 2016. If you're already familiar with a previous version of Excel, reading (or at least skimming) this chapter is still a good idea.

Identifying What Excel Is Good For

Excel is the world's most widely used spreadsheet software and is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Other spreadsheet software is available, but Excel is by far the most popular and has been the world standard for many years.

Much of the appeal of Excel is due to the fact that it's so versatile. Excel's forte, of course, is performing numerical calculations, but Excel is also useful for nonnumeric applications. Here are just a few of the uses for Excel:

• Number crunching: Create budgets, tabulate expenses, analyze survey results, and perform just about any type of financial analysis you can think of.
• Creating charts: Create a variety of highly customizable charts.
• Organizing lists: Use the row-and-column layout to store lists efficiently.
• Text manipulation: Clean up and standardize text-based data.
• Accessing other data: Import data from a variety of sources.
• Creating graphical dashboards: Summarize a large amount of business information in a concise format.
• Creating graphics and diagrams: Use Shapes and SmartArt to create professional-looking diagrams.
• Automating complex tasks: Perform a tedious task with a single mouse click with Excel's macro capabilities.

Seeing What's New in Excel 2016

Here's a quick summary of what's new in Excel 2016, relative to Excel 2013. Keep in mind that this book deals only with the desktop version of Excel. The mobile and online versions do not have the same set of features:

• Get & Transform (formerly known as Power Query) is fully integrated. Get & Transform is a flexible tool that makes it easy to import data from a variety of sources and transform it in a variety of ways. In the past, this tool was in the form of an add-in, and it worked only with the Pro versions of Excel. See Chapter 38, “Working with Get & Transform,” to learn more.
• The 3D Map feature is also in all versions of Excel 2016. This feature, formerly known as Power Map, allows you to create impressive data-driven maps. This is a rather specialized tool, and it is not covered in this book (but you can see an example in Chapter 20).
• New chart types are available. Excel 2016 supports the following new chart types: TreeMap, Sunburst, Waterfall, Box & Whisker, Histogram, and Pareto. See Chapter 19, “Getting Started Making Charts,” for examples.
• Forecas...