Excel 2000 for Windows for Dummies, 1st edition
Authors: Greg Harvey
Venue:  (1998)

From the Book:Welcome to Excel 2000 For Windows For Dummies, the definitive work on Excel 2000 for those of you who have no intention of ever becoming a spreadsheet guru. In this book, you find all the information that you need to keep your head above water as you accomplish the everyday tasks that people do with Excel. The intention of this book is to keep things simple and not bore you with a lot of technical details that you neither need nor care anything about. As much as possible, this book attempts to cut to the chase by telling you in plain terms just what it is that you need to do to accomplish a task using Excel. Excel 2000 For Windows For Dummies covers all the fundamental techniques that you need to know in order to create, edit, format, and print your own worksheets. In addition to showing you around the worksheet, this book also exposes you to the basics of charting, creating databases, and converting spreadsheets into Web pages. Keep in mind, though, that this book just touches on the easiest ways to get a few things done with these features - I make no attempt to cover charting, databases, or worksheet Web pages in a definitive way. This book concentrates mainly on spreadsheets because spreadsheets are what most people need to create with Excel. About This Book This book is not meant to be read from cover to cover. Although its chapters are loosely organized in a logical order (progressing as you might when studying Excel in a classroom situation), each topic covered in a chapter is really meant to stand on its own. Each discussion of a topic briefly addresses the question of what a particular feature is good for before launching into how to use it. In Excel, as with most other sophisticated programs, there is usually more than one way to do a task. For the sake of your sanity, I have purposely limited the choices by usually giving you only the most efficient ways to do a particular task. Later on, if you're so tempted, you can experiment with alternative ways of doing a task. For now, just concentrate on performing the task as described. As much as possible, I've tried to make it unnecessary for you to remember anything covered in another section of the book. From time to time, however, you come across a cross-reference to another section or chapter in the book. For the most part, such cross-references are meant to help you get more complete information on a subject, should you have the time and interest. If you have neither, no problem; just ignore the cross-references as if they never existed. Haw to Use This Bask This book is like a reference where you start out by looking up the topic you need information about (either in the Table of Contents or the Index) and then refer directly to the section of interest. Most topics are explained conversationally (as though you were sitting in the back of a classroom where you can safely nap). Sometimes, however, my regiment-commander mentality takes over, and I list the steps you need to take to accomplish a particular task in a particular section. What You Can Safety Ignore When you come across a section that contains the steps you take to get something done, you can safely ignore all text accompanying the steps (the text that isn't in bold) if you have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through more material. Whenever possible, I have also tried to separate background or footnote-type information from the essential facts by exiling this kind of junk to a sidebar. These sections are often flagged with icons that let you know what type of information you will encounter there. You can easily disregard text marked this way. (Icons used in this book are discussed a little later.) Foolish Assumptions I'm going to make only one assumption about you (let's see how close I get): You have access to a PC (at least some of the time) that has Windows 95/98 or Windows NT and Excel 2000 installed on it (and maybe there isn't much room on your hard disk for anything more!). However, having said that, I make no assumption that you've ever launched Excel 2000, let alone done anything with it. This book is written expressly for users of Excel 2000. If you have a previous version of Excel for Windows (like Excel 97) running under the previous version of Windows (version 3.1), please put this book down and instead pick up a copy of Excel 97 For Dummies, 2nd Edition, or MORE Excel 97 For Windows For Dummies, both published by IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. If you have a version of Excel for the Macintosh, you also need to put this book down, walk over to the Macintosh section of the store, and pick up a copy of Excel 98 For Macs ForDummies. If you happen to be using Excel 97 for Windows (either because you just haven't seen the need for upgrading yet, you're just too cheap to purchase the upgrade, or after installing Windows 98 you simply don't have enough disk space left for Excel 2000), you can use this book to figure out Excel 97 for Windows, provided that you promise to pay strict attention to the Excel 2000 icon shown in the left margin. Anytime you see this baby, it means that I'm talking about a feature or set of features that are brand-new in Excel 2000 (which means that they weren't yet invented in your version of Excel). I don't want any flame mail from you saying how the book's all wrong about some feature that doesn't appear in your copy of Excel. If that happens, I'll have to write you back and tell you that you weren't paying attention to the Excel 2000 icon. Shame on you. How This Book Is Organized This book is organized in six parts (which gives you a chance to see at least six of those great Rich Tennant cartoons!). Each part contains two or more chapters (to keep the editors happy) that more or less go together (to keep you happy). Each chapter is further divided into loosely related sections that cover the basics of the topic at hand. You should not, however, get too hung up about following along with the structure of the book; ultimately, it doesn't matter at all if you find out how to edit the worksheet before you learn how to format it, or if you figure out printing before you learn editing. The important thing is that you find the information - and understand it when you find it - when you need to perform a particular task. In case you're interested, a synopsis of what you find in each part follows. Part 1: Getting In on the Ground Floor As the name implies, Part I covers such fundamentals as how to start the program, identify the parts of the screen, enter information in the worksheet, save a document, and so on. If you're starting with absolutely no background in using spreadsheets, you definitely want to glance at the information in Chapter 1 to discover what this program is good for before you move on to how to create new worksheets in Chapter 2. Part II: Editing without Tears Part 11 shows how to edit spreadsheets to make them look good as well as how to make major editing changes to them without courting disaster. Refer to Chapter 3 when you need information on formatting the data to improve the way it appears in the worksheet. See Chapter 4 for rearranging, deleting, or inserting new information in the worksheet. And see Chapter 5 for printing out your finished product. Part III: Getting Organized and Staying That Way Part III gives you all kinds of information on how to stay on top of the data that you've entered in your spreadsheets. Chapter 6 is full of good ideas on how to keep track of and organize the data in a single worksheet. Chapter 7 gives you the ins and outs of working with data in different worksheets in the same workbook and gives you information on transferring data between the sheets of different workbooks. Part IV: Life beyond the Spreadsheet Part IV explores some of the other aspects of Excel besides the spreadsheet. In Chapter 8, you find out just how ridiculously easy it is to create a chart using the data in a worksheet. In Chapter 9, you discover just how useful Excel's database capabilities can be when you have to track and organize a large amount of information. In Chapter 10, you find out about adding hyperlinks to jump to new places in a worksheet, to new documents, and even to Web pages, as well as how to convert worksheets into both static and dynamic (interactive) Web pages for your company's Web site(s). Part VI: Doing a Custom Job Part V shows how to customize the way you work with Excel. In Chapter 11, you find out how to record and play back macros to automate tasks. In Chapter 12, you customize built-in toolbars and create toolbars of your own. Part VI: The Part of Tens As is the tradition in these ...For Dummies books, the last part contains lists of the top ten most useful and useless facts, tips, and suggestions. Conventions Used in This Book The following information gives you the lowdown on how things look in this book - publishers call these the book's conventions (no campaigning, flagwaving, name-calling, or finger-pointing is involved, however). Keyboard and mouse Excel 2000 is a sophisticated program with lots of fancy boxes, plenty of bars, and more menus than you can count. In Chapter 1, I explain all about these features and how to use them. Although you use the mouse and keyboard shortcut keys to move your way in, out, and around the Excel worksheet, you do have to take some time to enter the data so that you can eventually mouse around with it. Therefore, this book occasionally encourages you to type something specific into a specific cell in the worksheet. Of course, you can always choose not to follow the instructions. When I tell you to enter a specific function, the part you should type generally appears in bold type. For example, =SUM(A2:B2) means that you should type exactly what you see: an equal sign, the word SUM, a left parenthesis, the text A2:B2 (complete with a colon between the letternumber combos), and a right parenthesis. You then, of course, have to press Enter to make the entry stick. When Excel isn't talking to you by popping up message boxes, it displays highly informative messages in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. This book renders many messages that you see on-screen like this: =SUM(A2:B2) Occasionally I may ask you to press a key combination in order to perform a certain task. Key combinations are written like this: Ctrl+S. That plus sign in between means that you should hold down both the Ctrl key and the S key at the same time before releasing them. This (sometimes cruel) type of finger aerobics may take some practice. When you need to wade through one or more menus to get to the selection you want, I sometimes (though not often, mind you) use command arrows to lead you from the initial menu to the submenu and so on to the command you ultimately want. For example, if you need to first open the File menu to get to the Open command, I may write that instruction like this: File>Open. Notice those underlined letters in the preceding paragraph? Those letters called hot keys - represent commands that you can activate simply by first pressing the Alt key and then pressing the underlined keys in succession. In the example of File>Open, you'd press Alt, and then F, and then O. Special icons The following icons are strategically placed in the margins to point out stuff you may or may not want to read. This icon alerts you to nerdy discussions that you may well want to skip (or read when no one else is around). This icon alerts you to shortcuts or other valuable hints related to the topic at hand. This icon alerts you to information to keep in mind if you want to meet with a modicum of success. This icon alerts you to information to keep in mind if you want to avert complete disaster. This icon alerts you to brand-new features never before seen until the release of Excel 2000. Where to Go from Here If you've never worked with a computer spreadsheet, I suggest that, right after getting your chuckles with the cartoons, you go first to Chapter 1 and find out what you're dealing with. If you're already familiar with the ins and outs of electronic spreadsheets but don't know anything about creating worksheets with Excel, jump into Chapter 2, where you find out how to get started entering data and formulas. Then, as specific needs arise (like "How do I copy a formula?" or "How do I print just a particular section of my worksheet?"), you can go to the Table of Contents or the Index to find the appropriate section and go right to that section for answers.