1. What Excel Is and How It Is Organized

Excel is a spreadsheet program whose tables do the math for you. People use it for budgets, inventory, reports, sales analysis, financial models, and even small databases.

A workbook (an .xlsx file) is made of worksheets, whose tabs you see at the bottom. A worksheet is a grid: columns are labeled with letters (A, B, C … XFD), rows with numbers (1 … 1,048,576). Where a column and a row meet is a cell, which has an address: B3 is column B, row 3.

The main parts of the window:

• the Ribbon — tabs such as Home, Insert, Formulas and Data, full of command buttons;
• the Quick Access Toolbar — Save, Undo, Redo, and any commands you add yourself;
• the Name Box — shows the address of the selected cell, to the left of the Formula Bar;
• the Formula Bar (fx) — shows what a cell really contains: the formula, not just its result.

Excel runs on Windows, on Mac, in a web browser (Excel for the web) and on phones. The basics are the same everywhere, but some features exist only in the Windows desktop version, such as Power Pivot and the full VBA environment.

The practice sheet in FormulaCamp is laid out the same way: the Name Box on the left, the Formula Bar on the right, and a command toolbar on top.