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Course 5 – Basic Spreadsheets

Do you want to be able to keep track of your household accounts, or manage the money you make selling things at car boot sales? Or maybe you’re running a small business and need to keep track of your sales and receipts? If you have never used a Spreadsheet (or have used it very little) then this basic beginners Excel course show you how to put together a simple spreadsheet.

Pre-requisites: Course 1 – Jargon Buster AND Course 2 – Get Started, Get Connected AND Course 3 – Get Up to Speed with Computers OR pre-course assessment evidencing required skills

Equipment Required: Desktop or Laptop Computer, Office Software (preferably Microsoft Office, but OpenOffice or similar will be sufficient)

Duration: 6 Hours

Learning Outcomes

1. Learn your way around the Excel interface

    1. Tabs and ribbons
    2. Keyboard and mouse tips and tricks
    3. Creating, saving, closing and opening a workbook

2. Learn about Rows, Columns & Cells

    1. Working with text, numbers, dates and percentages
    2. Selecting a cell, cell-range, row or column
    3. Insert and delete and resize rows or columns
    4. Moving around a worksheet

3. Learn how to work with formulas

    1. Entering and editing a formula
    2. Rules for formulas
    3. Manipulating existing data
    4. Gotchas, best practices and handy tips

4. Learn about basic spreadsheet functions

    1. Five basic functions – SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MIN, MAX
    2. Adding together a group of numbers
    3. Averaging a set of numbers
    4. Counting how many numbers in a range
    5. Finding the largest/smallest number in a range
    6. Where to find and use other functions

5. Learn about formatting a worksheet

    1. Formatting a number or date
    2. Working with cell alignment, word wrap and shrink to fit
    3. Merging cells
    4. Formatting the font
    5. Superscript, subscript and strikethrough
    6. Setting borders and shading
    7. Using Format Painter to replicate cell formatting quickly
    8. Using AutoFill
    9. Making it pretty – adding pictures, backgrounds and styles

6. Learn how to use graphs and charts

    1. Creating a chart
    2. Changing the chart type
    3. Setting the chart title and labelling the chart axes
    4. Turning the gridlines on or off
    5. Showing or hiding the legend
    6. Adding data labels or showing the data next to the chart

7. Learn how to format a worksheet for printing

    1. Setting the page size and orientation
    2. Setting the margins
    3. Creating a simple header and footer
    4. Printing column headers and rows labels on every page automatically
    5. Changing the page breaks
    6. Printing the whole worksheet or just a selection
    7. Previewing the worksheet before printing