Making a basic spreadsheet that totals columns automatically using Microsoft excel is easier than you think. When people think about using the program Microsoft excel, they automatically presume that it is a difficult program to use. I guarantee that you will be able to follow this simple tutorial and make your own basic spreadsheet by the time the video is finished. It is all about learning and practicing you learn.
I actually have many Microsoft excel spreadsheets that I use for all different occasions. For example I have a spreadsheet to keep track of my websites, a spreadsheet for my business accounts,and even a spreadsheet to keep score in the darts game. Making a basic spreadsheet that totals columns automatically is a good start when learning Microsoft Excel. In the video tutorial below, it is explained how to make your own basic spreadsheet, and how to get it to add up the columns automatically. These instructions will work for most of versions of Excel, although there might be some new features in the latest versions.
While you are watching a video you can also read a long with the video transcription below. This is just for people that cannot hear properly or enjoy reading.
Excel can be a difficult program to master. If you are interested in learning more see this Excel video training course. They make everything look so easy!
Making a basic spreadsheet that totals columns automatically – video tutorial
This video is a very basic beginner’s guide to Microsoft Excel. It will explain to getting started with the basic feature of an Excel’s spreadsheet..
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Transcription of the video: Excel Tutorial – Making a Basic Spreadsheet That Totals Columns Automatically
This introductory session is to show you few of the things you can do with Microsoft Excel and then later on we will get to exploring all the different options and possibilities that the program offers. But lets very quickly do a spreadsheet, something that, I presume everyone will want to do.
Imagine you have a small business and you just need to record a few sales figures for the first three months of the year. this is when we can use Microsoft Excel to create a spreadsheet that can be used to show your accountants or your bank manager.
So, we will start with a title of business name and we will call it something very simple like XYZ limited. And we might want to put what’s the spreadsheet is about, and it’s recording sales of things. So there we are, so typed it in press the “enter” key and we will move down to the next row. What we are gonna do is to put some information what’s actually in spreadsheet. We will put the labels first, so we are not gonna record the first three months of the year. so if I type in “January”, so I am not gonna press enter I am gonna show you some thing cleaver excel can do for me, I want the February and March in it. Two sales, all I need to do is to put, mouse pointer on the bottom right of the cell there, and just drag across and you will see that automatically puts February and March.
It does all sort of things like that once all the dates are very good for automatically filling in, and it will fill in series of numbers and lots of other option but, we will look at them later on. so personal details what we are gonna sell down here, and besides some very simple things “sweets” “ Crisps” and “Pop” there we are. So the thing you might want to sell in a news agents, and I put some sales figures in these items, lets say we sell hundred pounds of Sweets in January, 150 pounds in February and 300 pound worth in March. Come down to “crisps”, lets say 75 pounds worth of crisps in January, February 125 and may be 215 worth in march. And finally “pop”, 125 in January, 195 in February and 350 in march there we go. So those are the figures, lets say we are out of business.
The next thing we work out with totals. So add a new row here called totals, so type it in. Move across to the next step. And to do the total here we do very quickly, so what we do, select all three cells there, and press this little magic button up here. Called “Auto sum” come have a look on when i press that button. And there we go total popping automatically for all the three columns. I also workout the totals for each of the four rows there Sweets, Crisps, Pop and of the Grand total so, add up to a grant total column. So I gonna put another labeling called the “total” of the end of that row of months in column “E” and again I am gonna select one, two, three and four cells, click my “Auto Sum” button and will the totals going automatically. Obviously what this 1635 figure, is equal to that and is also equal to that so they should match. You can test this as you notice here down at the bottom of the screen, as I select the numbers it will automatically tell that what those are, so you can see that five Xs are calculated, Which I promise that it does do. So it is a table of numbers which also looks very interesting we also have plane.
So we are gonna jazz it little bit make it look interesting. First thing is to do is to title, is to make a the title go across the whole table numbers. So you need to select all the sales that, the title goes across, including right up to the end of the table. Here is a button called “merge in center” click on that, what it does, it will merge cells together center the actual text in the middle, and might make that Bold. We might possible underline it. There are some of the border options here, so just underline it there and give it a snazzy yellow background there we go. I am gonna make the labels all bold “January, February, March and all the Sweets, Crips and Pop and Totals” make them all bold. I’m also actually separate the table of information from the title, so I insert a row here. Now just insert that. Now for the moment that all gone yellow so we don’t really want that, what I can do here is to select the whole row. Go the “Edit” menu go to “Clear” and chose the “All’ option and it will clear all the formatting out of that row. So that is nice and plain now. I might also want to make all the totals also bold here, so any body looking at it, so I select all those click “Bold”. Now if you want a grid on the whole sheet there is, but there is a grid there already. But when you print it, the grid wont show up. So we put a printing grid on. You need to click on the borders option and press the grid button. So there we are. Maybe highlight these totals. So highlight the once apart from the grand total. And just put a little green background on there and it will highlight all the grand total. put it a sort of orangey background as well. Ok, so that’s the numbers, bit more formatting perhaps make it look tidy because we don’t have place to there so I’m gonna bold all these numbers so they all look nice and neat. You wouldn’t perhaps want to do that for counting number just do that example we are gonna do that.
The last thing I want to do is to create a graph chart. Just to illustrate how all the different products compare month by month. so to do that, all I need to do is to select three months and the three ranges of products not the totals, because that will distort the chart. Leave the total out, make out to “My Chart” button here click on that, chart are once already highlighted. All I need to do Is to just click finish and there is my chart, so just move across so there is the spreadsheet, nice and tidy underneath. So there is my spreadsheet, with chart now because I want to go and see the bank manager, I’m going to show him. I’m talking about months rather than just perhaps the units off things. So I am going to highlight all the numbers and turn them to currency so what I do to the chat here I go all plane numbers. I’m gonna go to the format menu and click “sales” select “currency” there is a sample, that’s fine, but I don’t want to need any decimal places. So I am gonna change it to zero and click ok, so now my tables are updated with pound sings but all the chart is also updated as well. Just how clever it is. So there we are that’s a nice spreadsheet, which I could take to the bank manager, which he no drought give me a loan of, who know who much or throw me out one of those possibly. So that’s first look at Excel, how quickly we can put the information together.
I find the whole point of using the spreadsheet rather than paper or calculator. If I had made any mistake in one of those figures, normally I will have to go and recalculate everything. But here, lets say someone comes on and says, you made a mistake here “January” should be 95 pounds this week, if I type 95, watch all the number change. Ok __so quickly, have to do it. What will change is the total here and the total here and the graph total. So do that one more time. Keep an eye on these cells. I probably knew you didn’t quite notice but the chart will also change as well, I can show you with a extreme example. If I put zero into sweets and you can see that the sweets is the blue bar. By taking 95 pound off that will see the blue bar drop down quiet dramatically on that chart. And their it goes in fact it disappears. So it shows you the chart as you update as you update the numbers. And there we go and that’s the reason we use Excel, it saves you so much time, it automates so many things you would do manually in hours, you could do it inn seconds. So now you know it is a good thing to do.
Making a Basic Spreadsheet
