The Formula Bar

We mentioned earlier that worksheet cells are Excel’s building blocks. They store and display the information you enter in an Excel worksheet and allow you to perform worksheet calculations. You can enter information directly in a cell on the worksheet, or you can enter information through the formula bar. The contents of the active cell appear in the formula bar. The formula-editing buttons appear only when you enter or edit data in a cell.

Although you can enter information directly in a cell, using the formula bar has some advantages.

• If you move the pointer into the formula bar and click, three buttons appear in the formula bar.
• When you click the Enter button, Excel “locks in” the information you have typed in the formula bar and transfers that information to your worksheet.
• Clicking the Enter button is similar to pressing the Enter key except that pressing the Enter key normally activates the cell directly below the one in which you entered the data.
• If you make a mistake while typing, clicking the Cancel button tells Excel to delete what you have typed.
• Clicking the Cancel button is similar to pressing the Esc key.

Cells

• The workbook is made up of cells.
• This is the basic unit of the spreadsheet.
• The intersection of a row and column is a rectangular area called a cell.
• The naming convention for a cell reference is the alphabetic column letter position followed by the row number.
• The currently selected cell is referred to as the active cell.
• A cell can contain a value, a formula, or a text entry.
• A text entry is used to label or explain the contents of the workbook.
• A value entry can either be a constant or the value of a formula.
• The value of a formula will change when the components (arguments) of the formula change.
• The appeal of spreadsheet programs is the ability to change one value and watch all other values that depend on that first value automatically change when the spreadsheet is recalculated.

Active Cell or Selected Cell

• The cell, which has the dark border around it, is the active cell. This is the cell that can be acted upon and indicates where the insertion point is located.
• You can select a new active cell by using the keyboard’s arrow keys or clicking on a new cell with the mouse. You can also use keys like [PageDown] and [PageUp] and [Home] to change the active cell location.

Cell References

• Each cell occupies a unique location on the worksheet where you can store and display information, and each cell is assigned a unique set of coordinates, called the cell reference.
• Cell references are the combination of column letter and row number. For example, the upper-left cell of a worksheet is A1.
  • A reference identifies a cell or a range of cells on a worksheet and tells Microsoft Excel where to look for the values or data you want to use in a formula.
• The cell reference for the active cell appears at the left end of the formula bar in the Name box.
  • With references, you can use data contained in different parts of a worksheet in one formula or use the value from one cell in several formulas.
  • You can also refer to cells on other sheets in the same workbook, to other workbooks, and to data in other programs.
• The headings for the column and row containing the active cell appear three-dimensional, making it easier to identify the location of the current cell With 256 columns and 65,536 rows, your worksheet contains more than 16 million individual cells.
  • References to cells in other workbooks are called external references.
• References to data in other programs are called remote references.