Hello all, I am going to start publishing a series of Excel Tutorial here. The reason why I am starting this tutorial series is that I found that not many people know Excel well, yet I believe Excel is very useful in our daily lives! Most of people only know basic operations of Excel, like simple mathematical calculations or plotting charts. However the power of Excel is certainly beyond that!

These tutorials are understandable even for beginners. Let's begin right now!

All materials are solely prepared by @kenchung.

We will be using a demonstration file "demo.xlsm" throughout this tutorial. You can download this file here.

Chapter 1: Basic Terminology

Workbook

Commonly known as ‘an Excel file’. For example the "demo.xlsm" that you just downloaded is a workbook.

If you open a number of workbooks, you can switch between different workbooks with the hotkey Ctrl + Tab.

Worksheet / Sheet / Tab

A workbook contains tabs which are similar to pages for you to work on. You can move to other tabs by selecting with your mouse or using the hotkey Ctrl + Page Up or Ctrl + Page Down to traverse across tabs. You can click the rightmost button as shown below to create a new tab.

Row

A complete horizontal collection of cells. For example, we have selected row 7 in the figure below. In Excel language, we denote this selection by ‘7:7’. There are a total of 1048576 rows on one tab.

Column

A complete vertical collection of cells. For example, we have selected column H in the figure below. In Excel language, we denote this selection by ‘H:H’. There are a total of 16384 columns on one tab (from column A to XFD).

Cell

The basic element in Excel. For example, we have selected the cell B3 in the figure below.

Range

A collection of one or more cells. If a block of cells are in a rectangular shape, we can specify it using its top left cell and its bottom right cell, separated by a colon. For example, we call the range selected in the figure below ‘B2:D3’.

If the collection contains more than one block areas, we use a comma to separate them. For example we call the range selected in the figure below ‘B2:D3, A1’.

Formula

Contents in a cell that needs to be evaluated by the computer before having the final result. Formulas are typed in cells only and they all start with the character ‘=’. For example, A1 is a cell which contains a formula.

Value

Opposite to formula: contents in a cell that does NOT need to be evaluated by the computer before having the final result. For example, B2 is a cell which contains a value.

VBA / Macro

VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications, and is used for writing macros. They can help us to automate some actions in Excel, or carry out some complicated processes that cannot be achieved by formulas. Note that VBA codes are not inputted in the cells, but another place which would be discussed later.

File extension

This is a general term applicable for all documents on a computer. Generally, it is the letters after the final ‘dot’ in the file name. For example, our demonstration file has a file extension of ‘xlsx’.

There are 3 types of common file extension for Excel files:

xlsx: The latest Excel file format, since version 2007.
xlsm: Macro-enabled Excel files, since version 2007. You must save your file in xlsm format if you have written a macro.
xls: Old Excel format before version 2007. In the old versions, there is no such thing as ‘macro-enabled’ Excel files. Macros can be added in all Excel files in the past.

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://kenchung.vornix.blog/2018/10/26/excel-tutorial-chapter-1-basic-terminology/

Excel Tutorial - Chapter 1: Basic Terminology