Excel 2016 For Dummies - Harvey Greg

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href="#i000032170000.jpg" alt="remember"/> The cell contents section of the Formula bar is important because it always shows you the contents of the cell even when the worksheet does not. (When you’re dealing with a formula, Excel displays only the calculated result in the cell in the worksheet and not the formula by which that result is derived.) Additionally, you can edit the contents of the cell in this area at any time. Similarly, when the cell contents area is blank, you know that the cell is empty as well.

      

HOW YOU ASSIGN 26 LETTERS TO 16,384 COLUMNS

      When it comes to labeling the 16,384 columns of an Excel 2016 worksheet, our alphabet with its measly 26 letters is simply not up to the task. To make up the difference, Excel doubles the letters in the cell’s column reference so that column AA follows column Z (after which you find column AB, AC, and so on) and then triples them so that column AAA follows column ZZ (after which you get column AAB, AAC, and the like). At the end of this letter tripling, the 16,384th and last column of the worksheet ends up being XFD so that the last cell in the 1,048,576th row has the cell address XFD1048576!

What to do in the Worksheet area

      The Worksheet area is where most of the Excel spreadsheet action takes place because it’s the place that displays the cells in different sections of the current worksheet and it’s right inside the cells that you do all your spreadsheet data entry and formatting, not to mention a great deal of your editing.

      

To enter or edit data in a cell, that cell must be current. Excel indicates that a cell is current in three ways:

      ❯❯ The cell cursor – the dark green border surrounding the cell’s entire perimeter – appears in the cell.

      ❯❯ The address of the cell appears in the Name box of the Formula bar.

      ❯❯ The cell’s column letter(s) and row number are shaded in the column headings and row headings that appear at the top and left of the Worksheet area, respectively.

Moving around the worksheet

      An Excel worksheet contains far too many columns and rows for all a worksheet’s cells to be displayed at one time, regardless of how large your computer’s monitor screen is or how high the screen resolution. (After all, we’re talking 17,179,869,184 cells total!) Therefore, Excel offers many methods for moving the cell cursor around the worksheet to the cell where you want to enter new data or edit existing data:

      ❯❯ Click the desired cell – assuming that the cell is displayed within the section of the sheet visible in the Worksheet area – either by clicking it with your mouse or tapping it on your touchscreen.

      Click the Name box, then type the address of the desired cell and press the Enter key.

      ❯❯ Press F5 to open the Go To dialog box, type the address of the desired cell into its Reference text box, and then click OK.

❯❯ Use the cursor keys, as shown in Table 1-1 to move the cell cursor to the desired cell.

      ❯❯ Use the horizontal and vertical buttons located at the ends of the scroll bars found at the bottom and right edge of the Worksheet area to move to the part of the worksheet that contains the desired cell and then click or tap the cell to put the cell cursor in it.

TABLE 1-1 Keystrokes for Moving the Cell Cursor

      Note: In the case of those keystrokes that use arrow keys, you must either use the arrows on the cursor keypad or else have the Num Lock disengaged on the numeric keypad of your keyboard.

KEYSTROKE SHORTCUTS FOR MOVING THE CELL CURSOR

      Excel offers a wide variety of keystrokes for moving the cell cursor to a new cell. When you use one of these keystrokes, the program automatically scrolls a new part of the worksheet into view, if this is required to move the cell pointer. In Table 1-1, I summarize these keystrokes, including how far each one moves the cell pointer from its starting position.

      The keystrokes that combine the Ctrl or End key with an arrow key listed in Table 1-1 are among the most helpful for moving quickly from one edge to the other in large tables of cell entries or for moving from table to table in a section of a worksheet with many blocks of cells.

      When you use Ctrl and an arrow key to move from edge to edge in a table or between tables in a worksheet, you hold down Ctrl while you press one of the four arrow keys (indicated by the + symbol in keystrokes, such as Ctrl+→).

      When you use End and an arrow-key alternative, you must press and then release the End key before you press the arrow key (indicated by the comma in keystrokes, such as End, →). Pressing and releasing the End key causes the End Mode indicator to appear on the Status bar. This is your sign that Excel is ready for you to press one of the four arrow keys.

      Because you can keep the Ctrl key depressed while you press the different arrow keys that you need to use, the Ctrl-plus-arrow-key method provides a more fluid method for navigating blocks of cells than the End-then-arrow-key method.

      

You can use the Scroll Lock key to “freeze” the position of the cell pointer in the worksheet so that you can scroll new areas of the worksheet in view with keystrokes, such as PgUp (Page Up) and PgDn (Page Down), without changing the cell pointer’s original position (in essence, making these keystrokes work in the same manner as the scroll bars).

      After engaging Scroll Lock, when you scroll the worksheet with the keyboard, Excel does not select a new cell while it brings a new section of the worksheet into view. To “unfreeze” the cell pointer when scrolling the worksheet via the keyboard, you just press the Scroll Lock key again.

TIPS ON USING THE TOUCH KEYBOARD

      If you’re running Excel 2016 on a device that lacks any kind of physical keyboard, you need to open the Touch keyboard and use it to input your spreadsheet data.

To open the Touch keyboard, simply tap the Touch Keyboard button that appears on the right side of the Windows taskbar. Doing this displays the Touch keyboard, floating undocked at the bottom of the Excel program window, as shown in Figure 1-7.

       FIGURE 1-7: Windows 10 touchscreen shown after displaying the Touch keyboard beneath the Excel 2016 program window.

      To dock the Touch keyboard beneath the Excel 2016 program window, simply click the Dock button that appears to the immediate left of the Close button in the upper-right corner of the keyboard. To once again undock the Touch keyboard so that it floats and you can move around with your finger, tap the Float button (with a caret pointing upward on top of the keyboard icon) that replaces the Dock button (with a caret pointing downward).

      As shown in this figure, when docked, the Windows 10 Touch keyboard remains completely separate from the Excel program window so that you still have access to all the cells in the current worksheet when doing your data entry. The Windows Touch keyboard is limited mostly to letter keys above a spacebar with a few punctuation symbols (apostrophe, comma, period, and question mark). This keyboard also sports the following special keys:

      ❯❯ Backspace key (marked with the x in the shape pointing left) to delete characters to the immediate left when entering or editing a cell entry

      ❯❯ Enter key to complete an entry in the current cell and move the cursor down one row in the same column

      ❯❯ Shift keys (with an arrow pointing upward) to enter capital letters in a cell entry

      ❯❯ Numeric key (with the &123) to switch to the Touch keyboard so that it displays a numeric keyboard with a Tab key and extensive

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