Essential Digital Skills Level 1

111 videos, 7 hours and 55 minutes

Course Content

Editing and formatting data

Video 65 of 111
9 min 18 sec
English
English
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So we have created a basic, blank template here. And what we are going to do is just look at editing and formatting data. So to start with, we just created documents. So this, at the top here, is called Book One. And we can change that shortly. And this is just a very basic calculation on the spreadsheet. And what we are going to do is try and format this a bit better. When you look at this, it does look a bit messy, you know, it's all the same size, some of it's justified wrong and there's problems with it and we want to make it look a little bit better.

So we are just going to look at the basics, just really to show, to start with, how very similar editing basic data on an Excel spreadsheet is to do it on Word. So, the first thing we are going to do is look at the spacings within the cells, each one of these cells on the top is starting with letters. So you see these are going all the way across the alphabet. And then they go to two letters on from there. So, the spreadsheets are absolutely massive. So down here, we have numbers. So, what we can do, is we can change the dimensions of any one of the columns. So for example, you see here, under the B column, the text is going over, too, so we may well want to make these columns a bit bigger and we can do those different ways. Just highlight between B and C and we can drag it, so that now the columns are wider. So, if we were running lots of text down here, we can make that look nice and tidy.

We can also remove columns. So you think here, maybe this column we don't need. So if we just go on to it and then we just a right mouse click on it, we can then go down and delete it. We can also clear the contents. If there's lots of information in there we don't want, we can take that out. As for now, we are just going to delete that. So if we just go on here, we just put some contents in here. If we now go on to that column and we have got loads of content, we just want to get rid of all the data on there, but we want to leave that column in, just right mouse click, clear contents and all the text is gone. It's just another way around of deleting it. We can also make global changes to the columns. If you want them all the same, so... If we just click in the middle, that's highlighted everything. And what we can then do is we can drag this "A" across, make that bigger and now it's made them all exactly the same. So what I'm going to do is just make them slightly smaller, bring that back... And we have got that there. So, you can adjust that when you want to just adjust the settings. To get out of the global settings, click away from it.

Other things you can do are make titles and headings. So if you look at the top here, we are on the Home button. And here we have got the title of it, just a Test Excel document. So what we can do here is exactly the same as when working with Word. We can make it bold, we can highlight it underneath it, we can take that away by hitting the no fill button, we can change the text colour, we turn it to red or hit this button to the right and we can change it to any colour we want. Or, we can revert it back again using the back commands, you see, we are just going straight back on all that we have done, highlighted, bold and back to as it was. So what we want to do here, is we are going to make this a little bit bigger. So up the top, we have got the character size and we can increase the font size. So let's make that much, much bigger, maybe make it go right the way across. We now want to make it bold. So we are going to hit the bold button and we are going to underline it. So here's the underline button.

There are other things you can do on here, change the colours, we can put backgrounds on it, things like that. We can even change it to italics. So it goes across in italics. And up here, we can change the font, so we are now working with Calibri. But if we wanted to change this to another font, we can change that if we want. So, let's just put that back. So now, we have got the heading that we want at the top of the document. On the left-hand side, we have got quite a large margin, so what you can do is we are just going to take that down to a much smaller margin, just to keep it on a tidier side.

Up the top, we have actually put the head at the text there on line three. If we are happy with that, great. If not, if we want to remove one, you can just literally click on there to put a line and remove a horizontal line the same way as we would remove a vertical line. Now, this is the actual calculation. So, what we are looking at here is what is the exchange rate, how many pounds, we want to know what the figure is and at the bottom here is then how many euros. Now, the text is very small in here, so what we might want to do here is just increase the size of it, so we can just highlight this by just highlighting the cells we want to increase the size of and then we can use the button here just to increase it until we are happy with it. So we can just increase that up. Once we have done that, we have got it set at 28 and we probably want to do exactly the same on this side, so we are just going to go over here and we are going to increase this up to 28 as well.

We can also use this button here and just go directly to it if you wanted to. And now it's bigger. Because italics are very, very small, it's often very hard to see but you see here, we have got a spelling mistake. So all you need to do with the spelling mistake is you just type, type it over and change it. So if you go up to this top bar here, go to the end of it, use your mouse and go across, so we can just click on it, find the word you want to change, so we can then change the word. Change that so it's correct. And then we can come out of it and the word has been changed. Now, with the results down here, we might well think we want them right-justified, we want them central, so we can highlight that entire column, hit this button here to make it central and now all the results are then centred.

So what we have done with this spreadsheet here is this is the exchange rate. So if we change the exchange rate here to 1.3, what it will do it's now 65 euros, opposed to what it was before. This figure here is a variable field as well, we set it at 50 pounds, but if we want to change that to 500 pounds, for example, then it will change it. So, we can see that if we had 500 pounds of cash and we are going on holiday, the exchange rate's 1.3, then the euro amount will be 650 euros. So what you can also do with these is format the individual cells. So with this cell here, we can look at what the cell is and we can change it. So if we have got a financial figure, we can change it and just have the pound sign in there or the euro sign. Or we can also set the number of decimal points.

So here, if we have got 650... So maybe if I just go up here, let's just change that exchange rate to 1.176. So now we have got a figure here, we can then change that to how many decimal points we want. So we just right mouse click on it. We can go down here, there are lots of settings where we do the cut. And we have got a section here that says format cells. So when we go on to the format cells, it will tell you different options. So we could have a general number... A general data, which can be anything, is a general number. And then what we can do here is we can decide how many decimal places and also, what to deal with if it's a negative figure. So if you want the negative figures in red, a minus symbol in front of them or in brackets. So, we can look at how many decimal places, so we are going to set that at 2000, we are going to have anything negative in red and then we are going to look at the currency. So here, we have got some drop-down menus, so we can look at all the different types of currencies that are available. So we just pan down, you see there's loads and loads of different currencies on there. So we can go down here and we are going to France, we are going to set that the euro. And there are lots of other things you could do here with information.

It's got, see the euro sign there. We can also change currencies to what... Can change the data to whether it's a date or a time format, percentages, fractions. So there are lots of other things, but let's just, for now, just keep this as it is just for the currency. So we then click Okay. So now the figure shows the euro symbol at the end of it. So, it's very obvious that we are dealing with euros. So if I change this figure up here and you see now, it's got the decimal points on it. So, we change this now to 1.3 and go through and it's now got the 00 after it and again, back here, we can change this to 654 and it changes that down and now we have got 850 euros and 20 cents.

Other things you can do with it, you can think maybe this text here you want to have different colouring onto it, so we can go up here and we can put a highlight in there so it's yellow, so it's very obvious what the result is. You can then have text in different colours as well, to change that to red if you want to. So, there's lots and lots of different things you can do. So, just by having a play with all these settings up here, you can see very similar stuff to Word. We had Word on inserting pictures in, we can wrap text around stuff. We can insert tables, we can do all sorts of bits and pieces. With Excel, if you are looking at doing more complex stuff, a good starting block would always be to see if there's a template already on Excel that works for you. So, you may well find that you want to do... You know, keep some accounts and you may well find the best thing to do with that is to use a template that's already there.

Learning Outcomes:
  • EDSQ Unit 2 LO 8.2