1.1 Accessing Microsoft Excel

There are many other options, of course, but being an OU student you have free access to Microsoft 365 that includes the spreadsheet software Excel. If you have already installed Microsoft Excel on your laptop, then you may prefer to use your own version. Although earlier versions of Excel are not significantly different, the layout of some tabs and menus may vary slightly.

• You can run Excel by double-clicking on the Excel icon on your desktop or laptop (or select Excel from your list of programs).
• Excel will open with a clean, new worksheet called Book 1 that contains only one worksheet (Sheet1). You can add more sheets by clicking on the plus sign at the bottom of the worksheet or spreadsheet in case one sheet becomes too small or too cluttered. This will help you organise and manage your large sets of data, or a variety of data.
• Add a new worksheet by clicking on the plus sign.
• The new sheet Sheet2 looks exactly like Sheet1. Each individual cell is labelled according to the A1 reference style. This means that columns are labelled with letters from A to XFD and rows with number 1 to 1048576.

Figure 2 An empty worksheet in Excel

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A blank Excel worksheet with the different editing tools at the top; it shows columns labelled A to O and rows numbered 1 to 19. The tabs running along the very top of the sheet are: File, Home, Insert, Page layout, Formulas, Data, Review View, Automate, Developer, Help. Home, Formulas and Data are circled in black.

Figure 2 An empty worksheet in Excel

The latest versions of Excel are organised using a ribbon interface, which consists of a collection of icons for each tab. The screenshot above shows the Home ribbon with several icons for general editing such as font size, text alignment or cell styles. In this session, you will use the Home, Formulas and Data tabs in Excel. You may click on each tab and familiarise yourself with the large main icons.