Advance Excel Syllabus

Advance Excel Syllabus

Exploring Data Types

An Excel workbook file can hold any number of worksheets, and each worksheet is made up of more 

than 17 billion cells. A cell can hold any of three basic types of data:

■ A numeric value

■ Text

■ A formula

A worksheet can also hold charts, diagrams, pictures, buttons, and other objects. These objects 

aren’t contained in cells. Instead, they reside on the worksheet’s draw layer, which is an invisible 

layer on top of each worksheet.

Numeric values

Numeric values represent a quantity of some type: sales amounts, number of employees, 

atomic weights, test scores, and so on.

Text entries

Most worksheets also include text in some of the cells. Text can serve as data (for example, 

a list of employee names), labels for values, headings for columns, or instructions about the 

worksheet. Text is often used to clarify what the values in a worksheet mean or where the 

numbers came from.

Text that begins with a number is still considered text. For example, if you type 12 Employees

into a cell, Excel considers the entry to be text rather than a numeric value. Consequently, you 

can’t use this cell for numeric calculations. If you need to indicate that the number 12 refers 

to employees, enter 12 into a cell and then type Employees into the cell to the right.

Formulas

Formulas are what make a spreadsheet a spreadsheet. Excel enables you to enter flexible 

formulas that use the values (or even text) in cells to calculate a result. When you enter a 

formula into a cell, the formula’s result appears in the cell. If you change any of the cells 

used by a formula, the formula recalculates and shows the new result.

Formulas can be simple mathematical expressions, or they can use some of the powerful 

functions that are built into Excel. An Excel worksheet set up to calculate 

a monthly loan payment. The worksheet contains values, text, and formulas. The cells in 

column A contain text. Column B contains four values and two formulas. The formulas are in 

cells B6 and B10. Column D, for reference, shows the actual contents of the cells in column B.

Entering Text and Values into Your Worksheets

To enter a numeric value into a cell, move the cell pointer to the appropriate cell, type the 

value, and then press Enter or one of the arrow navigation keys. The value is displayed in 

the cell and appears in the Formula bar when the cell is selected. You can include decimal 

points and currency symbols when entering values, along with plus signs, minus signs, and 

commas (to separate thousands). If you precede a value with a minus sign or enclose it in 

parentheses, Excel considers it to be a negative number.

Entering text into a cell is just as easy as entering a value: activate the cell, type the text, 

and then press Enter or a navigation key. A cell can contain a maximum of about 32,000 

characters — more than enough to store a typical chapter in this book. Even though a cell 

can hold a huge number of characters, you’ll find that it’s not possible to actually display 

all these characters.

What happens when you enter text that’s longer than its column’s current width? If the cells 

to the immediate right are blank, Excel displays the text in its entirety, appearing to spill 

the entry into adjacent cells. If an adjacent cell isn’t blank, Excel displays as much of the 

text as possible. (The full text is contained in the cell; it’s just not displayed.) If you need to 

display a long text string in a cell that’s adjacent to a non blank cell, you have a few choices:

■ Edit your text to make it shorter.

■ Increase the width of the column (drag the border in the column letter display).

■ Use a smaller font.

■ Wrap the text within the cell so that it occupies more than one line. Choose Home

➪ Alignment ➪ Wrap Text to toggle wrapping on and off for the selected cell or 

range.