Excel Cheat Sheet
Side 1
Sean Fox, Academic Computing-Carleton College Oct 30, 2000
File Formats:
There are 2 different Excel file formats and 5 different
versions on campus (5.0/95, and 97/98/2000 (grouped to
indicate common file formats)). Each newer version can
import and Save As into the older versions formats. Older
versions can't necessarily deal with the newer versions
files. This cheat sheet will deal with version 97/98/2000.
Note that Excel 2000 has some non-critical features (none
covered here) which are ignored if the subsequent file is
opened in earlier versions. Also, menu options in Excel
2000 are often hidden—click the double-arrow at the
bottom of the menu to reveal additional options.
Help:
The help is context sensitive. If you're in a pop-up
window the help button within that window gives you
help specific to that task. You can search for help by
name, but it helps if you know what Excel calls a
particular feature. It may be useful to look first for a more
general topic (or one that's somewhat tangential to your
actual goal) that will tell you the name of the feature
you're interested in. Once you know the name you can go
directly to help on that topic.
Data Entry and Formatting:
The pointer changes to reflect what will happen when you
click in a given location. Here are some examples:
This pointer…pops up when you point to:
Menu, Tool Bar, Scroll Bar
Text in a cell. This is the insertion bar
A cell when you are in selection mode
The fill handle at the corner of a selected fill
or range.
A column or row heading boundary which can
then be resized
A split box on the scroll bar
• Numerical formatting (scientific notation, number of
decimal places, etc.) and Text formatting are under
Format..Cell, including aWrap Text option under the
Alignment tab. Changes apply to all selected cells or
just the selected portion of a single cell. This can be
useful to get a special character (like greek letters
from the symbol font), or a subscript mixed plain
text.
• Paste Special gives an option to paste the f