You wonder why Excel makes such a big deal about telling you which cell is current in the worksheet? That's a good question, and the answer is important:

In the worksheet, you can enter or edit information in only the cell that's current.

The repercussions of this seemingly innocuous little statement are enormous. It means that if you're paying more attention to what you need to enter in your spreadsheet than to which cell is current, you can end up replacing something you've already entered. It also means that you'll never be able to edit a particular cell entry if you haven't first selected the cell to make it current.

So just how many cells are we talking about here?

I'm not exaggerating when I say that each worksheet contains millions of cells, any of which can be filled with information. Each worksheet has 256 columns, of which only the first 9 or 12 (letters A through I or L) are normally visible in a new worksheet, and 65,536 rows, of which only the first 15 to 25 are normally visible in a new worksheet. If you multiply 256 by 65,536, you come up with a total of 16,777,216 empty cells in each worksheet you use! (That's over 16 million of those suckers!)

And as if that weren't enough, each new workbook that you start comes equipped with three of these worksheets, each with its own 16,777,216 blank cells. This gives you a grand total of 50,331,648 cells at your disposal in any one Excel file that you happen to have open. And should that number prove to be too few (yeah, right!), you can add more worksheets (each with its 16,777,216 cells) to the workbook.

Assigning 26 letters to 256 columns

When it comes to labeling the 256 columns in a worksheet, our alphabet - with its measly 26 letters - is not up to the task. To make up the difference, Excel doubles up the cell letters in the column reference so that column AA immediately follows column Z. This is followed by column AB, AC, and so on to AZ. After column AZ, you find column BA, and then BB, BC, and so on. According to this system for doubling the column letters, the 256th (and last) column of the worksheet is column IV. This, in turn, gives the very last cell of any worksheet the cell reference IV65536.

What you should know about Excel at this point

Remember the following things about Excel:

Each of these three blank worksheets contains a whole bunch of cells into which you enter your data.

Each cell in each of these three worksheets has its own cell address made up of the letter(s) of its column and the number of its row.

What you still need to know about Excel

You could easily get the mistaken idea that a spreadsheet program like Excel is little more than a quirky word processor with a gridlock that forces you to enter your information in tiny, individual cells instead of offering you the spaciousness of full pages.

Well, I'm here to say that Bill Gates didn't become a billionaire several times over by selling a quirky word processor. (All you Microsoft Word users out there, please hold your tongues!) The big difference between the cell of a worksheet and the pages of a word processor is that each cell offers computing power along with text-editing and formatting capabilities. This computing power takes the form of formulas that you create in various cells of the worksheet.

Quite unlike a paper spreadsheet, which contains only values computed somewhere else, an electronic worksheet can store both the formulas and the computed values returned by these formulas. Even better, your formulas can use values stored in other cells of the worksheet, and, as I explain in Chapter 2, Excel automatically updates the computed answer returned by such a formula anytime that you change these values in the worksheet.

Excel's computational capabilities, combined with its editing and formatting capabilities, make the program perfect for generating any kind of document that uses textual and numeric entries and requires you to perform calculations on those values. Because you can make your formulas dynamic - so that their calculations are automatically updated when you change referenced values stored in other cells of the worksheet - you will find it much easier to keep the calculated values in a worksheet document both current and correct.

Getting the Darn Thing Started

If you're at all familiar with using Windows XP or 2000, you won't be shocked to find out that you have about a zillion ways to get Excel up and running after the program's been installed on your hard drive. (Okay, only about half a dozen, and I'm going to talk about almost all of them.) Suffice it to say at this point that all the various and sundry methods for starting Excel require that you have Windows XP or Windows 2000 installed on your personal computer. (Excel 2003 won't run under any older Windows versions, such as Windows 95 and 98.) After that, you have only to turn on the computer before you can use any of the following methods to get Excel 2003 started.

Starting Excel 2003 from the Windows Start menu

The most common way to launch Excel is by selecting the program from the Windows Start menu just as you can do to start any program installed on your computer. To start Excel 2003 from the Start menu, follow these simple steps:

1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar to open the Windows Start menu.

2. Highlight All Programs at the top of the Start menu.

3. Click the Microsoft Excel 2003 option on the Programs menu.

As soon as you complete these steps, Windows opens Excel 2003. As the program loads, you see the opening screen for Microsoft Excel 2003. When Excel finishes loading, you are presented with a screen like the one shown in Figure 1-4, containing a new workbook in which you can begin working.

After launching Excel from the All Programs submenu, Windows goes ahead and adds Microsoft Excel to the left panel of the Windows Start menu. This means that the next time you need to launch Excel, all you have to do is click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click Microsoft Excel on the left side of the Start menu.

Starting Excel 2003 with a desktop shortcut

If you use Excel all the time like I do, you won't want to have to deal with the Start menu each time you need to launch the program. Instead, you can create an Excel desktop shortcut that enables you to start the program simply by double-clicking its icon. If you find that is too much trouble, you can add the desktop shortcut to the Quick Launch toolbar on the Windows taskbar. By doing that, you make it possible to launch the program simply by clicking the Excel button on the Quick Launch toolbar.

To create the Excel desktop shortcut, follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar.

The Start menu opens where you can click the Search item.

2. Click Search in the lower-right corner of the Start menu. The Search Results dialog box appears.

3. Click the All Files and Folders link in the panel on the left side of the Search Results dialog box.

The Search Companion pane appears on the left side of the Search Results dialog box.

4. Type excel.exe in the All or Part of the File Name text box.

Excel.exe is the name of the executable program file that runs Excel. After finding this file on your hard disk, you can create a desktop shortcut from it that launches the program.

5. Click the Search button.

Windows now searches your hard disk for the Excel program file. After locating this file, its name appears on the right side of the Search Results dialog box. When this filename appears, you can click the Stop button in the left panel to halt the search

6. Right-click the file icon for the excel.exe file and then highlight Send To on the pop-up menu and click Desktop (Create Shortcut) on its continuation menu.

A shortcut named Shortcut to excel.exe appears to your desktop.

7. Click the Close button in the upper-right corner of the Search Results dialog box.

After closing the Search Results dialog box, you should see the icon named Shortcut to excel.exe on the desktop. You should probably rename the shortcut to something a little more friendly, such as Excel 2003.

8. Right-click the Shortcut to excel.exe icon and then click Rename on the pop-up menu.

9. Replace the current name by typing a new shortcut name, such as Excel 2003 and then click anywhere on the desktop.

After creating an Excel desktop shortcut on the desktop, from then on, you can launch Excel by double-clicking the shortcut icon.

If you want to be able to launch Excel by clicking a single button, drag the icon for your Excel desktop shortcut to the Quick Launch toolbar to the immediate right of the Start button at the beginning of the Windows taskbar.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Excel 2003 For Dummies by Greg Harvey Excerpted by permission.
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