Placing
Comments into an Excel Spreadsheet
You might
have noticed when you were looking through some of the menus that there is a
thing in the Insert menu called Comment with a funny little yellow box beside
it. *You can also see the same icon if you right mouse button click on a cell
inside a spreadsheet that has a red pointer in the corner.
The comment
box is a way for us to write text inside cells even though they contain values
that we are going to be using inside formulae. As we all know, text and values
in a cell do not mix if that cell contents is in a formula, so the comment is
very valuable.
When we
choose the Insert Comment option, a little box opens on an empty side of the
cell; this box is an invitation to type text inside it.
The text
automatically wraps, but if we type too much text inside the box it disappears
and we have to scroll through the box to find it.
To fix this,
the box also offers us the opportunity to change its size by dragging the sides
or corners to make it larger or smaller or change its shape.
When a cell
has a comment in it, a little red corner appears in the cell, just like the one
below, right below the number 5 and beside the comment box with my name in it.
See the boxes around the periphery of the comment box that we can use and
handles when we want to change the size of the comments box?
Once we
finish typing inside the comment box, we can just move our cursor into another
cell and click it, and the comment will disappear into its little red corner.
When we want
to read the comment, we simply click inside the box and, voila, it appears like
magic!!!
When we want
to edit the comment, we can click inside the cell with the comment in it, access
the Insert menu and choose the Edit Comment option. This allows us to insert or
delete text from the comment.
We can also access the Edit Comment option by RIGHT mouse button clicking inside the cell with the comment and choosing the option from that menu. To clear the text out of the comment or to delete the comment, we use the same menus.
While we're in the Insert Menu
Adding and Removing Rows or columns from a spreadsheet.
So here we are with a spreadsheet all built and ready to go - something like the Plumbing spreadsheet - and we realize that we need to insert another column between two that already exist.
The easy way to insert an extra column is to go to the top of the column that will eventually be to the RIGHT of the column we want to insert and RIGHT mouse button click in the gray area where the column letter appears. From the menu that pops up, choose the Insert option and a column will automatically be added to the left of our highlighted column.
Alternatively, we can highlight the column to the right of our proposed new column, click on the Insert menu and choose the Column option. A new column will appear automatically appear to the left of our highlighted column.
The picture below shows the column highlighted and the column option clicked on in the Insert menu
To add a row, we use the same procedure remembering that the inserted/new row will appear ABOVE the row that we highlight.
Removing arrow or column is easier. To delete a row or column, just highlight the row or column and press the delete button.
AND for our next Trick.....
Using more than one sheet in a single Excel file.
If we look at the bottom of the graphic above, we'll see a set of arrows and then one highlighted tab that says Sheet1 followed by two non-highlighted tabs that say Sheet2 and Sheet3, like this:
Each spreadsheet file can hold many spreadsheets inside it. Each of the spreadsheets can be placed on a separate Sheet and automatically becomes part of the file. Let's use the Plumbing spreadsheet as an example again.
I am actually interested in doing three different plumbing jobs, but I cant decide on which option I'm going to use until I get the cost for all three calculated. The first is the downstairs bathroom that we already built the spreadsheet for. The second is another downstairs bathroom, but it's a slight variation on the first - I want to add a shower option to this one - so I will use the same spreadsheet but I will add some extra materials and some shower fixtures. The third plumbing project is a downstairs bathroom with laundry facilities - laundry tub and washer and dryer hookups added to the toilet and sink. I will, again, use the same original spreadsheet and add to it.
When I add a new spreadsheet to the original spreadsheet file, all I need to do is click on the Sheet 2 or Sheet 3 tab and insert the new spreadsheet into what appears to be a brand new spreadsheet file. What I will end up with is one spreadsheet file called Plumbing.xls with three different spreadsheets contained in it - each on a different sheet. This way, all three spreadsheets will be treated as one single file.
We can even change the names of each spreadsheet - instead of calling them Sheet1, Sheet2 an Sheet3 - by right mouse clicking on the sheet tab and choosing the rename option from the pop-up menu. We just type in the name we want to use and away we go.
The
easy way to get three copies of one spreadsheet onto three different sheets of
one file is
1. Build the spreadsheet including formulae totals etc. but without headers and footers. The headers and footers don't copy from one sheet to another. Each time you copy onto a new sheet, you will need to go into the proper menus and insert header and footer text etc.
2. Highlight the part of the spreadsheet that you are going to copy onto a new sheet by holding down the left mouse button and dragging across and down the columns and rows of data. Do a Ctrl+C to copy or use the Edit menu and click on the copy option
3. Click on the next Sheet tab at the bottom of the Excel page and when the new sheet opens, position your cursor in cell A1.
4. With the cursor in cell A1, do a Ctrl+V or go to the Edit menu and click on the Paste option. This action should paste an exact copy of the spreadsheet into sheet 2. You can go on to Sheet 3 and do the same paste action if you'd like to have a third copy of the spreadsheet.
5. For further sheets, just repeat steps 3 and 4
Of course when we copy and paste the spreadsheets into the new "sheets" the formatting disappears, so we will have to make all the columns wide enough to fit the data and we will have to change font sizes and styles and, as mentioned earlier, if we used headers and footers we will have to change them if necessary.
Okay, time for another assignment!
.
