Excel Interface

To use excel, find the Excel shortcut on the desktop or search in the start menu for Excel.

When you click on Excel 20xx icon, a default window will open, which is the interface of Excel. Today we will discuss its different features and areas.

Workbook:

A workbook is a whole place, where you will work in Excel. By default, workbook consists of one (in Excel 2016) or 3 (in Excel 2013 and earlier) worksheets. You can check how many worksheets your workbook contains by looking at the bottom left area of excel interface.

Think of workbook as a notebook and worksheets as pages of the notebook.

Navigation in Excel:

You can move around in Excel plenty of ways; e.g. keyboard keys, mouse, scroll bars etc.

Keyboard keys:

Arrow keys will shift selection to one cell from the current cell in the arrow key direction. if you want to move quickly up and down, use "page up" and "page down" keys. they will move one window up or down respectively.

Mouse:

Wheel of the mouse can be used to scroll up and down in an excel sheet. You can also move around by just pressing the wheel one time and then moving the mouse in any direction.

Scroll Bars:

You can also navigate using scroll bars. they are present at right side and bottom right side of the excel worksheet. It is also a quicker way to navigate in Excel.

Ribbon:

Ribbon is under the top menu in Excel. It is the extension of top menu. It displays sub-menus, commands and functions.

Formula Bar:

Ofrmula bar is present under the ribbon. It displays the formulae applied and values in the selected cell. left side is the address bar which shows the adress of current selected cell.

Rows, coulmns and Cells:

Worksheets contains rows and coulmns. Rows are titled with numerics like 1, 2, 3, ......... and coulmns are titled with Alphabets like A, B, C, ......., AA, AB, ...... AAA, AAB, AAC, ....... etc.

Intersection of row an coulmn is called cell. Every cell is unique and comprises unique address. It is the combination of its row and coulmn number. 

For example, the address of a cell from row 5 and coulmn D will be D5.

Status Bar:

Status bar is present at the bottom of excel interface. It shows the status of excel workbook at left area and after that a macro button to start macros. In middle right area, it shows the summary of selected cells. count in case of non-numeric entries and sum, average and count if selected area contains numeric entries. At right side, it has selectors for different layout options and zoom controller.