Introduction to Spreadsheets (Part Two)

Entering Data into a cell: To enter data into a cell, simply click and type into the cell, followed by pressing the enter key. Updating the contents of the cell can be done two ways. Firstly, you can click into the cell and type in new values, pressing enter key after. Or, secondly, you can click into the formula bar at the top of the spreadsheet (displayed below) and edit the contents of the cell. Don't forget to press enter after editing within the formula bar.

Using Formulas in Excel: The golden rule when you start entering formulas into a spreadsheet, or something we will be looking at after functions, is that they alway start with the equal sign. In the example to the left, four basic formulas are displayed. Each starts with the equal sign, followed by the cell reference, the operator and then the second cell reference. There are a couple of points to note from the example. Firstly, instead of entering values within the formula, we have used cell references. Why you may be asking? Well, and you may wish to try this yourself, by using cell references in the formula the spreadsheet is more dynamic. Because the formula using cell references, whenever the cells are updated the resulting formula will be updated. For instance, the first formula could have been written =35+30, but what would happen if you changed either of the values in cells C2 or D2. Obviously, you would have to modify the formula. Using cell references eliminates this problem.