3.0 INTRODUCTION
Every business has numerical tasks to be performed, be it related to accounts,
taxes, sales or budgeting. Businesses also need graphs and charts for analysis and
projections. At homes, we track our own budgets and investments. Mathematics
and Engineering students deal with big numbers, formulas and calculations.
Almost all of us deal with tables, data and calculations in some or the other form.
There are many software packages available to assists us in all these number
based functions. Electronic spreadsheet is most common of them.
In this unit, we will study how we can use electronic spreadsheet to store,
maintain, manage, manipulate and organize our data for budgeting, analysis and planning purposes or how we can use to it track students performance, weather
data or inventory and maintain friends list, customer list, etc.
3.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you will be able to ;
- learn what a Spreadsheet is and how to use it;
- create, edit, save, preview and print Workbooks;
- format worksheets with different settings such as margins, headers or footers;
- store, search, retrieve, sort and filter tabular data;
- manage and Manipulate data using functions and formulas; and
- create graphical charts and perform analysis functions.
3.3 WHAT IS A SPREADSHEET ?
Spreadsheet is basically a grid consisting of horizontal rows and vertical columns.
This format has traditionally been used in accounting to present book-keeping
ledgers.
Electronic spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates the paper
worksheet to organize data into rows and columns and stores various types of
data.
Each intersection of rows and columns is called a cell where the data is stored to
be used in calculations within the spreadsheet. Electronic spreadsheets have lot of
in built features and tools such as functions, formulas, charts, and data analysis
tools that make it easier to work with large amount of data. It provides ability to
perform mathematical calculations quickly and has flexibility to perform quick
recalculation in case of any data change.
Electronic spreadsheets can be used in any area or field that works with numbers
and are commonly found in the accounting, budgeting, sales forecasting, financial
analysis and scientific fields. It can be used to create and maintain a list, store
database records, create charts or graphs, compare numerical or financial data.
There are quite a few electronic spreadsheet programs available like Excel,
OpenOffice Calc or Google spreadsheets. We will consider MS Excel 3007 for
our study. It comes bundled in MS Office which is an office automation tool.
