Quick Books® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Appendix A. A Crash Course in Excel

In This Appendix

• Starting and stopping Excel

• Explaining Excel's workbooks

• Inputting text, numbers, and formulas into cells

• Writing formulas

• Scrolling big workbooks

• Copying and cutting cell contents

• Formatting cell contents

• Using Excel functions

• Saving and opening workbooks

• Printing Excel workbooks

In this appendix, I review the basic Excel skills that you may need in order to get the most benefit from some chapters in this book. If you plan to download and work with the sample workbooks from my Web site, www.stephenlnelson.com, you need some of the skills that this primer covers.

If you've used Excel much — even for just a few weeks — you probably already possess all these skills. Nevertheless, if you're even a teensy bit concerned about whether you have the right skills, take the time to quickly read through this chapter.

Note: I used Excel 2007 to write this appendix. If you're using Excel 2010, you may notice some slight differences between the images that appear in here and what you see on your monitor. If you need detailed guidance, pick up Excel 2010 For Dummies by Greg Harvey (Wiley Publishing).

Starting Excel

You can start Excel in two ways, neither of which requires a Ph.D. in physics. You can use the Start button or you can open an Excel workbook.

If you are going to use the Start button, you click Start (as you can guess if you have worked with other Windows programs) and then you choose Microsoft Excel from the Start menu or the All Programs menu. ...