More on spreadsheets

By: Donald Edrington - North County Times | Sunday, June 18, 2006 8:08 PM PDT ∞

The first major application created for desktop PCs was a spreadsheet program named VisiCalc, which was later overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3. Nowadays, Excel is number one, with WordPerfect's Quattro Pro and the MSWorks Spreadsheet following behind.

Since nearly everyone has a spreadsheet program nowadays, it may seem strange that Google is offering a free one online. However, it does have some interesting advantages, mainly that it can be accessed by multiple users in remote locations. Furthermore, once a file has been named, it is automatically saved after each editing change.

This is great for multi-office businesses, but probably of little value to home PC users ---- many of whom don't know what to do with the program they have. Well, a spreadsheet was designed mainly to deal with mathematical issues, such as budgeting and financial forecasting. Modern spreadsheets do much of the repetitious work for you. Here's an simple example, using a no-frills profit and loss sheet:

Launch a blank spreadsheet, and type JANUARY into Cell B1. Press ENTER and then click on the tiny black square in the lower right corner of the JANUARY cell. Now drag it to the right and watch the rest of the months fill in automatically.

Now type INCOME into Cell A2 and then type in some typical dollar amounts into the cells below the months. Next type EXPENSES into Cell A3, followed by some typical amounts in the row under the INCOME numbers. To better see how all this works, make a couple of the "expense" amounts higher than the "income" amounts. Finally, type P/L into Cell A4.

To calculate January's profit or loss, type this formula into Cell B4: =SUM(B2-B3). Press ENTER and watch the calculated amount appear. Well, typing this formula probably seems like a lot of work ---- but now things get easy. Grab the tiny square in Cell B4, drag it to the right and watch all the other month's P/L amounts fill in, with negative amounts being preceded by a minus sign.

For adding a column of numbers you don't even type a formula. Click the "total" cell under the numbers and then click your toolbar's Greek "sigma" symbol, followed by pressing ENTER.

To multiply numbers such as those found in, say, Cells B7, C7 and F7 click into any cell where you want the answer, type =(B7*C7*F7) and press ENTER.

The asterisk is the "times" symbol in a spreadsheet, while a forward slash is the "divided by" symbol. Thus, to divide a number in, say, H2 by a number in K6 you would type =(H2/K6) into an answer cell and press ENTER.

If you've completed solving a mathematical question and later find that any of the entered amounts have changed, simply overtype the old number with the new one and press ENTER to get the corrected total.

This is just the tiniest tip of the spreadsheet iceberg, but should help get you started using one of the most valuable tools on your PC. More tips can be found at www.pcdon.com and calls are welcome at (949) 646-8615.