The spreadsheet is the fundamental application for computer assisted reporting.
Microsoft Excel is the world’s most popular spreadsheet program. Here, you will find tips on basic operations, as well as tips and tricks for using the program better. It’s not a course, but instead a resource you can come back to again and again

You can download this pdf guide to basic Excel operations.You can find similar data to that used in the tutorial on the Statistics Canada website.  You can copy and paste the data into an Excel sheet (from Microsoft Internet Explorer) for practice.

Normally, Excel shows you the results of formulas in individual cells, unless you double click in a cell to edit it. But there’s a quick way to see more.

This is just a twist on calculating a simple percentage. All you need to do is divide the amount of the change by the original value.

Imagine that you are faced with a situation where you need to quickly calculate the difference between the largest and the smallest numbers in a range, or put another way, the spread.

Importing a text file is almost as easy as creating one.

Excel has many advanced tricks and features that can be real timesavers, and which can help as you analyze your data to search for trends.

You will frequently need to insert a new column or columns between existing columns in an Excel worksheet, for example if you need a column in which to calculate percentages.

Calculating an average isn’t much different from calculating a sum in Excel.

One of the most powerful abilities of a spreadsheet is to repeat the same calculation over and over again. This tip shows you how to quickly calculate the difference in every row of two columns of numbers.

It is easy to calculate a percentage in Excel. The formula is the same one they taught back in elementary school math. To figure out what percentage 25 is of 50, you divide 25 by 50 and multiply by 100.

Basic addition is one of the main things journalists do with spreadsheets. 

Sometimes you want to have more, or less, precision in a column of numbers. 

Sometimes you want to have more, or less, precision in a column of numbers. 
Adding or removing decimal places is easy.

Sometimes, in order to make a spreadsheet worksheet more readable, you will want to format one or more rows and/or columns in a colour different from the default white. Doing this is easy.

Often, you will find information on the web that you would like to put into spreadsheet form so you can manipulate it or do calculations. 

Sometimes, you want to remember  the order you originally entered information into a worksheet, even after you have sorted the spreadsheet based on one or more columns.

At least as often as not, when journalists work with numbers, money is involved. Government budgets, lists of contracts or grants, and lists of salaries are but a few examples of times we use spreadsheets with a lot of currency figures in them.

The autofilter is one of the most useful features in Excel. It allows you to quickly hide rows in a worksheet which you do not need to see.

From time to time, you may want to switch columns and rows in your Excel spreadsheet, making columns into rows and rows into columns. You may do this, for example, to convert a very wide and shallow sheet to a narrow and deep one, to make it easier to print. You may also do this [...]

Sometimes, you don’t want to see all of the rows or columns in a worksheet, especially one with a great many of either. It’s easy to make them vanish, and as easy to make them reappear. You’ll feel like a wizard in no time.

The autofilter is one of the most useful features in Excel. It allows you to quickly hide rows in a worksheet which you do not need to see.

Sometimes, you will need to export your Excel worksheet as a text file. Text files are a standard way of moving data from one software program to another, in a format that can be read by almost any application.
Excel makes this easy.

If you would like to quickly reposition your cursor to cell A1, use the keystroke combination <ctrl> <home>. To jump to the bottom right (last cell of the sheet that is in use), use the combination <ctrl> <end>.

Excel is a popular spreadsheet program. 
Sometimes, you will want to split a single name field into first and last names fields. In this example, we assume that the name column has the last name, followed by a comma, and then the first name. We can do this with Excel’s convert text to columns wizard.
First, highlight [...]

While average is the most commonly-used measure of central tendency, it can be misleading when there are a number of very large or very small values in a range, for example with salaries. Consider a range of hockey players’ salaries. Most would make a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but a small few would [...]

Excel is a popular spreadsheet program. This function works in much the same way in other programs.It is easy to calculate a percentage in Excel. The formula is the same one they taught back in elementary school math. To figure out what percentage 25 is of 50, you divide 25 by 50 and multiply by [...]

Excel is a popular spreadsheet program. This function works in much the same way in other programs.