How a table works

An Excel sheet has more than a million rows and sixteen thousand columns. To keep from getting lost in all that space, every box has a short address made of a letter and a number, like C4. With an address, you can find a number on the sheet or point to it in an email, and later you'll use addresses in formulas.

What a sheet is made of

An Excel sheet looks like graph paper: every number and every word goes into its own box. Around the boxes are buttons and fields you'll need in every lesson:

A cell and its address

The columns of a sheet are labeled with letters, and the rows with numbers. The box where a column and a row meet is called a cell.

A cell's address is the column letter followed by the row number. The cell in column C and row 4 is called C4, just like a square in Battleship.

Find a few cells yourself:

Entering and fixing data

To put something in a cell, click it to select it and start typing. Press Enter: the value is saved, and the selection moves to the cell below.

If you start typing in a cell that already has something in it, the new value replaces the old one completely. To fix a single letter, double-click the cell or press F2 (fn + F2 on a Mac laptop): a cursor appears inside the text.

Two keys fix typing mistakes. Esc cancels what you're typing while you're still typing it: the cell keeps its previous value. Ctrl + Z undoes the last action, even after the value is saved. On a Mac, press ⌘ instead of Ctrl.

Range

A group of neighboring cells is called a range. Its address is written with a colon: the first cell and the last one. A range is always a rectangle, so two corners are enough to describe it. For example, C2:C6 means the cells of column C from row 2 to row 6.

To select a range, hold down the mouse button on the first cell and drag to the last one. Select a few different ranges on the sheet below:

If a range has numbers in it, the status bar at the very bottom of the sheet instantly shows their sum, average and count. Select the quantities C2:C6, and you'll see "Sum: 20" there. That way you can find a total without typing anything into the sheet.

A tidy table

Almost everything Excel can do, from sorting to PivotTables, expects a table of a certain kind:

• the first row holds the column headers, one per column;
• each record takes up one row: one order, one product, one day;
• there are no empty rows or columns and no merged cells inside the table.

With a table like that, Excel finds its edges by itself and doesn't get confused. See what happens when these rules are broken.

Key points

• A cell is the box where a column and a row meet. Its address is the column letter and the row number, like B3.
• Select a cell and type, and Enter saves what you typed. Double-click or F2 lets you fix the contents without erasing them.
• Esc cancels typing, and Ctrl + Z undoes the last action.
• A range is a rectangle of cells. Its address is written with a colon: B2:B6.
• A tidy table has headers in the first row, one record per row, and no empty rows or merged cells.