Excel Basics:
Getting Started

Excel has many settings that change what you see on the screen, what and how sheets print,  and how Excel behaves in general. To try to ensure that the directions for the projects and exercises will fit what you see on your computer, you will need to make your settings match the settings provided here. These are mostly the default settings after a new installation of Excel.

You will inspect:

• Windows Regional Settings for currency formats

• Excel's appearance on the screen

• the document's Page Setup for printed copies

• Excel Options for how Excel behaves

Please be courteous to other users. Do not make changes without permission on a computer that is not yours!

Once we have the settings straight, you will learn how to get data into and out of cells. Now that is really basic!

Trouble-shooting your lesson results:

If your worksheet doesn't look like what the lesson illustrations show: 

• Check the Regional settings if currency, date, or time formats are odd.

• Check your Page Setup settings if the layout on paper is wrong.

• Check Options settings for other unexpected behaviors. 

• Did you skip a step?

• Did you do exactly what the directions called for? Read the steps again and make sure you caught all the details.

• Are your computer operating system and program version different from what was used in writing the lessons? [Win98 or Win XP and Excel 97, 2000, 2002, or 2003] 

• While every attempt has been made to be accurate, the directions could be wrong, at least for your computer and software version. If you find errors, please notify me! Every  page has a link at the bottom to my email address.

~~  1 Cor. 10:31 ...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ~~

Last updated: 22 Jan 2008