Posted by: neo2525

For all your table and graph needs, Microsoft Excel is a great way to get the job done fast and easily. Upon opening the program, you will be immediately brought to a page with rows and rows of blank boxes with only one of them highlighted in black. To begin making a table, click and hold the small black square located in the bottom right of the highlighted box. Once you have it clicked, drag it left, right, up, or down to customize the length and width of the table you wish to make.

            Once you have made the table, it is time to start entering text into each individual square. To do so, put the mouse over the box in which you want to type, and click once. You will notice that there will then be a blinking cursor in that box. Once you see the cursor, you can type whatever you would like in that box. To quickly move from box to box, you can use the arrow keys to move up, down, right, or left a box. You can also hit the Enter key to move down one box, and the tab key to move right one box.

            If the text exceeds the size of the box you can view all the text within that box in the space provided adjacent to the Fx button near the top of the page. You can also make changes to the text from there too.

            Onto graphs and charts. To insert a graph, you can either click the button displaying a small bar graph located in the toolbar, or click insert, then chart. Whichever way you choose to do it, a new small screen will pop up displaying all the selections for the different types of graphs and charts. The choices include Column, Bar, Line, Pie, XY, Area, Doughnut, Radar, Surface, Bubble, Stock, Cylinder, Cone, and Pyramid.

            If for example you were to select a Column graph, you would highlight the type of Column graph you want and then hit the Next button. Once you have hit next, you will be asked for the data range. To enter the data range, simply highlight the set of data you want to be put into a graph. Once entered, hit the next button again. The next page will ask you if you would to show the graph legend or not. It will also ask you where you would like the graph to be placed(top, bottom, right, left, corner). Once you have selected whether or not to show the legend and have selected the location of the graph, hit next once more. Lastly, you will be asked for a chart title, which you make by typing in the space provided, and if you would like the graph on the current page or a new page. This is the last step of graph/chart making. If you want to change something, hit the Back button located next to the Next button. If you feel everything is how you want it, hit the Finish button and your graph will appear.