Microsoft Office documentation
Excel 2016 - Windows
Excel 2016 - Mac
Tutorials
These links are (mostly) 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.
You can see what version(s) of Excel each video/article applies to at the bottom of each page.
- Basic tasks in Excel 2016 for Windows
- Creating and Editing a Workbook
- Freeze or lock panes
- Printing Excel Sheets and Workbooks
- Creating a Chart
- Mail Merge using an Excel spreadsheet
- IF AND OR Functions
- Logical functions - a list of the logical functions with links to articles on each one
- Conditional Formatting, and Advanced Conditional Formatting
- VLOOKUP
- PivotTables
- Password protect workbooks and worksheets
- Work with macros
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 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
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