Getting Started
Spreadsheet Basics course
- Offered by DataCamp for free (but you do need to create an account)
- Uses Google Sheets, but covers basics (how a spreadsheet works, cell references, and formulas) for both Sheets and Excel
- You get a statement of accomplishment upon completion!
Microsoft Office documentation
Tutorials
These links are to Excel 2013 video tutorials. Most of these instructions will apply to Office 2016 as well. Some of the options will have different locations in the menus/ribbon in other versions of Excel.
- Creating and Editing a Workbook
- Freeze or lock panes
- Printing Excel Sheets and Workbooks
- Creating a Chart
- IF AND OR Functions
- Conditional Formatting, and Advanced Conditional Formatting
- VLOOKUP
- PivotTables
- Password protect workbooks and worksheets
- Work with macros
Excel 2010 for Windows
- What's New in Excel 2010
- Basic Tasks in Excel 2010
- Create a chart from start to finish
- Quick start: Chart your data in a worksheet
- Create your first spreadsheet in Excel 2010
Excel 2011 for Mac
- Learning roadmap for Excel for Mac 2011
- This page provides links to videos and articles walking you through the functions of Excel
- Excel for Mac 2011 Basics .pdf tutorial
- Excel for Mac 2011 Training
- Another page linking to both articles and videos guiding you through specific features of Excel
- VLOOKUP: What It Is, and When To Use It
Excel 2013 for Windows
- What's New in Excel 2013
- Excel functions (by category, 2013)
- Tutorial: Import Data into Excel 2013, and Create a Data Model
- Create your first Excel 2013 workbook
- Training courses for Excel 2013
Excel 2016 - Windows
Excel 2016 - Mac
point to support articles and videos from Microsoft. If they apply to a specific edition of the software, they will identify that near the top.
- Basic tasks in Excel for Windows
- Create a workbook in Excel
- Freeze or lock rows/columns
- Print a worksheet or workbook
- Tutorial: Import Data into Excel, and Create a Data Model
- Tables and charts
- Mail Merge using an Excel spreadsheet
- Formulas and Functions
- Logical functions - a list of the logical functions (IF, AND, OR, etc) with links to articles on each one
- Conditional Formatting
- VLOOKUP
- XLOOKUP function
- PivotTables
- Require a password to open or modify a workbook (Note: Please be careful with both setting and saving the password.)
- Create a macro
DataCamp offers a free course on Data Analysis with Spreadsheets that you may also find useful.
Workshop Handouts
Preparing an Excel Workbook for Presenting to Others
What's the Difference between a Spreadsheet and a Database?
Microsoft Exel is a spreadsheet program. Other spreadsheet programs include Calc (OpenOffice.org - Mac and PC platforms), Numbers (iWorks for the Mac), Lotus 1-2-3 (IBM for PCs, though this will no longer be supported after September 30, 2014), and many others. The most important information to know about spreadsheets is that they have limits and a spreadsheet is not the right tool for every for every project. Spreadsheets are great for doing calculations for small data sets, tracking small data sets over the short term, and visually presenting data. Databases are better at tracking large data sets with complex relationships and are meant to be used over long periods. They can also perform calculations on large data sets.
Penn State University Libraries Technology Training's has created a set of guidelines for determining whether or not your project is suitable for a spreadsheet or a database.
Helpful Excel Tutorials
- Arithmetic in Excel
Transferring Data Tables and Graphs to MS Word- (YouTube)
- (YouTube)
- Transferring Tables from Excel to Word Transferring Graphs and Charts from Excel to Word