What is Excel? — Excel Course

Understand what Excel is, why people use it, and how spreadsheets turn information into useful results. Learn it step by step with guided practice on Excelquro.

Understand

Excel is a spreadsheet application. You can store names, numbers and dates in cells, organize them into rows and columns, calculate results with formulas and turn data into reports or charts.

Worked example

The formula adds the three Sales values in column B. Excel uses the cell range B2:B4 instead of requiring you to add each number manually.

=SUM(B2:B4)

Follow along

1. Read the column headings first.
2. Look at the individual rows of employee data.
3. Notice that each value lives in a cell.
4. Enter =SUM(B2:B4) in a result cell.
5. Compare the result with the three Sales values.

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