Spreadsheets

BCS IT User Level 1 Courseware

Course Outline

GETTING STARTED

• Starting the Excel program.
• Opening a workbook stored in a particular folder.
• Types of data used within a worksheet.
• Understanding spreadsheet components and their layout.
• Cells.
• Rows.
• Columns.
• Worksheets and workbooks.
• Closing a workbook.
• Exiting Excel.
• Ways of inputting your data.
• Entering numbers and text.
• Using your first function.
• Default text and number alignment.
• Exiting Excel and saving your data at the same time.
• Saving a workbook to a particular folder, using a particular file name.
• Creating a new workbook.
• Good practice when entering data.
• Good practice when naming and storing files.

MANIPULATING YOUR DATA

• Selecting a cell.
• Selecting a range of cells by dragging the mouse
• Selecting a range of cells using the keyboard.
• Deleting cell contents.
• Inserting additional cell content, or modifying existing cell content.
• Using the Undo and Redo buttons.
• Copying and moving data between cells using the Clipboard.
• Copying and moving data between cells using drag and drop.
• Finding text in a worksheet.
• Finding and replacing text within a worksheet.
• Adding or deleting rows and columns within a worksheet.

SUMMARISING AND DISPLAYING INFORMATION

• Tools and techniques available to summarise and display information.
• Good practice when creating or editing lists.
• Sorting a list in ascending alphabetical order.
• Sorting a list in descending alphabetical order.
• Sorting a list in ascending numerical order.
• Sorting a list in descending numerical order.

FUNCTIONS AND FORMULAS

• Operators.
• Entering formulas into a worksheet cell.
• Considerations when using formulas and functions.
• Using parentheses (brackets) to force the order of calculations.
• Common functions.
• SUM function.
• AVERAGE function.
• ROUND function.

FORMATTING TECHNIQUES

• Bold, Italic and underline formatting.
• Font type, size and colour.
• Formatting cells using currency symbols.
• Formatting numbers as percentages.
• Formatting cells to display a fixed number of decimal places.
• Applying and removing comma separator formatting.
• Adding borders and shading to cells, rows and columns.
• Horizontally aligning data within a cell range.
• Changing the width of a column using drag and drop techniques.
• Changing the width of a column to a specific value.
• Setting the column width to the optimal width.
• Changing the height of a row to a specific value.
• Setting the row height to the optimal height.
• Vertically aligning data within a cell.

USING CHARTS AND IMAGES

• Choosing the right chart for the job.
• Creating a bar chart.
• Creating a line chart.
• Creating a pie chart.
• Adding a title to a chart.
• Removing titles from a chart.
• Adding chart axis titles.
• Removing chart axis titles.
• Adding a chart legend.
• Removing a chart legend.
• Inserting an image.

PAGE SETUP

• Setting the paper size.
• Setting page orientation.
• Modifying the page margins.
• Inserting automatic page numbering.
• Inserting the date and time into a header or footer.

PROOFING YOUR WORK BEFORE PRINTING

• The importance of checking your work.
• Spell checking a workbook.
• Previewing a worksheet.
• Printing a worksheet.