11

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

11..I I

N N T T RROODDU U C C

T T I I OON N Office packages are bundles of programs that help you with

daily‘office’ chores, such as writing documents, making extensivecalculations, preparing

presentations, maintaining databases etc. Whilethere are a number of competing Office suites,

Microsoft Office is theunchallenged market leader and is used by the majority of

companiesaround the world.An Overview This manual is meant as an introduction to the three most important

programs in Microsoft Office 2000: Word, Excel and PowerPoint.In the first section,

we will discuss all the elements that these three havein common. We then devote a section to each

of the programs. In thesection on Word, we discuss how you can use this word processor totype, edit and

format documents such as writing assignments. In the thirdsection, we will learn the basics about

Excel. Excel is Office’sspreadsheet program, and it is used heavily in your Quantitative Methodssubject

s. The fourth section then provides a step-by-step guide tocreating presentations in PowerPoint.SMR

(Studenten Micro Ruimte)Synonym for computer lab at our university.What you need to get started Strictly speaking, you

do not need anything. All of the above programsare installed in our faculty’s

computer labs (or SMRs as they are called atour university). There are two

SMRs at the Faculty of Economics andBusiness Studies, and both are located in the main

building atTongersestraat 53. To use a PC there, you need your student ID number and a password that

has been mailed to you together with your studentID card.THE COMPUT

ER ROOMSSMR 1 SMR 2LOCATION

Rooms 3.047 – 3.061 Rooms 0.012 – 0.014NUMBER OF PCS

120 60OPENING HOURS

Mon – Thu 9 a.m. – 10 p.m. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.Fridays 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. 9 a.m. – 5

p.m.Weekends closed closedMORE INFO

www.fdewb.unimaas.nl/smr/ In general, the SMRs should only be used for

study related activities,e.g. downloading and reviewing lecture notes, writing papers, registering

4 Introduction to

Microsoft Office●●●●●●●●●●●●

for courses etc. If you want to write personal emails or surf the web for fun,

you are asked to restrict yourself to the early morning (9 – 10 a.m.)or the evening (after 5 p.m.). Even

with these rules in place, the SMRstend to get crowded often.When the SMRs are closed, you can

walk over to the library, whichoffers a small computer room of its own. Be aware that other

facultiesalso use this computer room – you may have to wait (possibly a longtime) for a PC to become

available. If you know in advance that youneed a PC for a study related reason, you can make a

reservation for upto two hours per day.THE L IBRARYADDRESS

Bonnefantenstraat 2PHONE

(043) 388 34 27WEBSITE

www.ub.unimaas.nl OPENING HOURS

Mon – Thu 8.30 a.m. – 10 p.m.Fridays 8.30 a.m. – 9 p.m.Saturdays 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.Sundays 12

a.m. – 5 p.m.Our computer labs can get very crowded during peak times, and it may be a

good idea to buy a used or new PC to work at home. In that case,you will also need to buy a copy of

Microsoft Office, as Office is acommercial program. The cheapest way to get Microsoft

Office 2000 isto buy it from the ICT Service Center. Office 2000 Professional costs 25 €1

for students and includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus other useful programs such as

Microsoft Outlook.THE ICT SERVICE CENTERADDRESS

Looiersgracht 14, Room 0.011PHONE

(043) 388 35 64EMAIL

[email protected] WEBSITE

www.icts.unimaas.nl OFFICE HOURSPhone/Email Walk in

Weekdays 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. 8.30 a.m. – 5 p.m.Saturdays

10 a.m. – 4 p.m. closedOn the Use of this Book In this book, we assume that you have access to a PC with

theappropriate software. We also presume that you know in general how to1

These prices are sharply reduced in comparison to normal retail prices, because Maastricht University (in cooperationwith other Dutch

universities) buys large quantities of educational licenses.

General

Topics: Introduction 5●●●●●●●●●●●●

operate a Windows-based PC. We will

take it from there.This manual is not meant to be all-encompassing. It is meant as anintroduction

and as a guide. We will focus on getting you started, and indoing so will ignore a number of useful

advanced features. You areencouraged to go beyond the contents of this book and explore the

toolsthat you are working with. Some of your future courses will also expandupon the

contents in this manual, particularly the QM courses makeextensive use of Microsoft Excel. If you

feel that you need further guidance, there are a number of excellent printed resources.

Personally,we find the jargon-free language and useful hints of the ‘For Dummies’series to be

particularly appealing, but there are certainly many other useful and well-written computer books

out there. There is also a lot of helpful information on the web.This book is focused on showing you

how to accomplish certain tasks inMicrosoft Office. Be aware that there are usually

several ways to getthings done. We will endeavor to show you as many of them as possible.In

doing so, we will use the following conventions:A toolbar.·

Toolbar buttons that initiate a

certain function are usuallydisplayed in the margin together with a brief description

of whatthe button does.·

If you need to press a key on the keyboard, we will indicate

this by printing the key, e.g./implies that you need to hit‘enter’. Frequently, key

combinations are used to accomplishtasks. An example of such a key combination would be

c +P, which means that you should pressand hold

the ‘ctrl’ keywhile pressing ‘p’.·

When you need to enter more than a few characters, we

will not print the individual keys, because that would be space consumingand hard to read.

Instead, we will indicate the text using a specialfont, as demonstrated here: ‘enter this’

.A menu bar.·

Some of the options cannot be initiated by using a keyboardshortc

ut or an on-screen button. Such options are can usually befound in the menu bar. If we want you to

select an option fromthe menu bar, we will list the names of the options inchronological

order. E.g. ‘File’„

‘Print’ would imply that youclick on ‘File’ in the menu bar, and

then select ‘Print’ from themenu that appears. Instead of clicking on the items, you can alsouse

your keyboard: pressaand the underlined letter, in our example

a +F. Once the menu is open, simply pressing theunderlined letter is

sufficient. E.g. after pressinga +F, pressingP

will be enough to take you to the print menu.

6 Introduction to


·

Finally, we will use a similar notation when you need to

selectoptions from the Start menu, e.g. ‘Start’„

‘Programs’„

‘Microsoft Word’ will launch Word. Once again, you can usekeyboard shortcuts: press

the Windows key (ÿ), followed by theunderlined letters.The Start menu.

If you are stuck…If you cannot find the answer here, there are still a number of ways toget help.If you are

stuck using a certain program, the first thing you can try is pressing the1key. Pressing

1is like asking the computer for help.In most cases, the appropriate program will

then give you additionalinformation on whatever you are currently doing. The intricacies of

thehelp system are discussed in more detail in the second chapter of thissection.There are, however,

cases when your computer does not understand your problem (because the persons that built the

software did not foresee it) or when your PC is not able to help you (because it is malfunctioning)

. Insuch cases, you may want to check out a helpful website, Tech24SelfHelp atwww.tech24inc

.com/help.html. Tech 24 offers self-helplinks that are sorted by category (e.g. ‘Internet’, ‘Email’,

‘Outlook’).They also offer live support from certified technicians.You can also try contacting the

producer directly. If you have troublewith any part of Office, you might want to

visitwww.microsoft.comtosee if they know the answer to your question. However, some

producersdo not offer a lot of support or charge money for it.Another option is to call or email the

computer whiz kids at the ICTservice center of our university. They offer support for the software

usedthroughout the university, which includes among others Windows,Microsoft Office, Internet

Explorer, and the McAfee virus scanner. (Seethe info box on p. 4 for their contact information.)Fin

ally, befriending a geek may be the best solution. Geeks are by naturefriendly, helpful and

extremely well versed in all things computer. If youcan count one of them as your friend, he

(or in rare cases she) probablywon’t mind dropping by and helping you out when you are

havingtrouble with your PC. An invitation to dinner or to the movies in returnwon’t hurt either.We wish

you success in working with Microsoft Office!●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

22..C C

OO M M M MOON N

E E LLE E M ME E N N T T S

S OOF F M M

I I C C RROOS S OOF F T T

OOF F F F I I C C E E

P P RROOG G RR A

A M MS S This chapter discusses commonelements of all Office programs.We will

first discuss their common makeup and will thenturn towards common functions.All Microsoft Office programs, and

indeed most Windows programs,share some common elements. We will start out by discussing

featuresthat are more or less similar across all Office Programs, namely themenu bar, toolbars,

and status bar. We will then dive into functions thatare shared by all Office products, such

as the methods to create, open,save and print files.Common featuresAll Office programs have a

comparable assortment of control features: amenu bar, several toolbars and a status bar. We will now

discuss theseelements one by one.The menu bar The menu bar offers you access to all

services of the application you areusing. You can call up any item on the menu bar either by clicking on

itdirectly or by pressing and holding theakey while pressing theunderlined

letter of the entry. (E.g. to open the file menu, pressa +F.)

Click the ‘expand menu’ buttonto see the entire range of options.Clicking on any of the headings will bring up the appropriate

menu,which contains a broad range of functions. Be aware that no Officeapplication displays all of

the available functions right away. Manycomputer users experienced the vast range of

available options asconfusing. This is why Microsoft Office applications

initially displayonly the most frequently used items. Only if you do not do anything for amoment

after opening a menu will they display the remaining options.To speed up the process, you can

also press the ‘expand menu’ button atthe bottom of the menu.

8

Introduction to Microsoft Office●●●●●●●●●●●●

If the option you arelooking for is not in thelist, you

can wait a fewmoments for the menu toexpand to its fulllength…… or you can click onthe ‘expand menu’ buttonto expand it

to full sizeimmediately.All options available in Office applications are grouped into one of

themenus. While the individual options differ between the applications, thegeneral

menus are rather similar.·

The ‘file’ menu offers options to create and open documents,save, preview and

print your work and other options related tothe actual document.·

The ‘edit’ menu allows you easy

access to the most fundamentalediting options, such as cutting, copying and pasting,

undoingand redoing changes, as well as finding and replacing text.·

The ‘view’ menu allows

you to determine how you would likeyour document to be displayed. Furthermore, it

gives you accessto parts of your document and of the application that are notalways visible on the

screen, such as specialty toolbars.·

The ‘insert’ menu lives up to its name: it enables you to

insert allsorts of objects into your document, whether it is a mere symbol,an equation, a footnote, a

comment or a picture.·

Under the ‘format’ heading, you find all of the formattingoptio

ns. What you can format depends on the application: e.g.fonts and paragraphs in Word, cells,

rows and columns in Excel,and slides in PowerPoint.·

The ‘tools’ menu contains an assortment of

helpful functions,such as the spell checker.·

The ‘window’ menu comes in handy when you

are working onseveral documents simultaneously, as it allows you to arrange thedocuments in

any way that you like or that is useful to you.

Gener

al Topics: Getting Hooked Up 9●●●●●●●●●●●●

·

Finally, the ‘help’ menu is your first stop whenever you arestuck.The toolbars

While the menu bar is highly useful, it would be frustrating if you had touse it all the time. Imagine you

want to cut a line of text and place itsomewhere else – it would take quite long if you had to

select ‘edit’,‘cut’ and then ‘edit’, ‘paste’ for every simple adjustment. For thatreason, there

are a number of toolbars that contain shortcuts to the mostfrequently used functions.Gener

ally, Word, Excel and PowerPoint will display only the two mostimportant toolbars at

startup: the standard toolbar and the formattingtoolbar.The standard toolbar gives access to the

most common functions:creating, opening, saving, printing and emailing documents, cutting,copying

and pasting text, undoing and redoing changes, etc.The formatting toolbar, as its

name suggests, gives access to the mostcommon formatting options. Using it, you can e.g.

change the typeface,size, alignment, and indentation of your text.The function of the most important

buttons will be discussed in theappropriate sections of the next chapters. If you are looking for a particular

shortcut or are not certain what a specific button does, there isa quick way to get help: let your mouse pointer

hover above the buttonfor a few moments, and a yellow sign will appear with a brief explanation.

Use this button to get access toinfrequently used shortcut buttons.Toolbars are similar to menus in one aspect: unless

there is anabundance of space, they only show the most commonly used functions.If you do not use a

particular shortcut button for a while, it will drop off the toolbar. To get it back, click on the ‘more

buttons’ button at the rightend of the appropriate toolbar.‘View’„

‘Toolbars’

All applications also offer toolbars for specific problems. Beside thestandard and

formatting toolbars, Word offers 14 additional toolbars,Excel offers a further 12 and

PowerPoint another 11 additional bars. Youcan make additional toolbars visible by clicking on

‘View’, ‘Toolbars’on the menu bar, and then selecting the appropriate toolbar.

10 Introduction to


The status bar The status bar gives ready access to a wealth of

information about your document, but the type of information is very much dependent on

theapplication. Most of the information displayed there is aimed at theadvanced user, and we

will only discuss it in a small number of cases.Common functionsWe will now turn towards the

common functions of Microsoft Office.There are usually several ways to activate a function, such

as a button ona toolbar, a keyboard shortcut or an entry in the menu bar. All possibleways to

launch a feature are detailed in the margin.Please note that buttons on the toolbar work

slightly differently than theother two options: they immediately execute the feature, without

givingyou an opportunity to change any settings. If you press e.g. the ‘print’ button on the toolbar, your

document will be printed immediately usingthe settings from the last print job.

This could be dangerous if you areworking in the SMR and your last print process used the

expensive color printer!If you want to check or change any of the settings beforeactivating

a feature, you should use the keyboard shortcut or the entry inthe menu bar.c +

N‘File’„

‘New…’Create a new document.Creating new documents

Pressing the ‘new document’ button on the standard toolbar will get youa completely blank document

in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Using thekeyboard shortcut or ‘File’ menu will allow you to

choose between a blank document and some prefabricated templates, such as templates for

letters in Word or PowerPoint presentations with elaborate designs.c +o

‘File’„

‘Open…’Open a document.Opening existing documents

If you want to access an existing document, you can press the ‘open’ button on the standard

toolbar, select ‘File’, ‘Open’ in the menu bar or pressc +O

. All of them work in the same way; they lead to awindow in which you can select the

file to be opened:

General Topics: Getting Hooked Up 11●●●●●●●●●●●●

To open a file, you first need to go to the location of the file. Two of themost frequently used

locations, the ‘my documents’ folder and your ‘desktop’, can be found using the shortcuts on the left side of

thewindow:. You can also use the ‘history’ button to locate files that youhave recently worked

on. If all this does not help, e.g. when your file ison a floppy disk, use the ‘look in’ box at the top of

the window tonavigate to the location of your file.File typeFiles can be classified intodifferent types,

indicating thatthey contain differentinformation. E.g. Worddocuments can contain elaboratetexts, while PowerPoint filescontain slides

for a presentation.Files cannot simply be openedwith any program. If you do nothave the software associatedwith the file type,

e.g.PowerPoint for PowerPointdocuments, you may not be ableto use the file, or you may berestricted in its use.Once you have moved to the

appropriate location, you should see a listof documents. If your file is among them,

you can open it by double-clicking on its name or by selecting it and pressing the ‘open’ button. If

alarge number of files is listed, you may need to scroll through the list tofind the file you are looking for. If

you are in the right location, but your file is not on the list, check if the rightfile type

is selected. However, thecorrect type will usually be selected by default, e.g. Microsoft Excel

willalways try to open Excel documents initially.c +S‘File’„

‘Save…’Save the current document.Saving documentsIf you have worked on a document and wish to save

your progress sothat you can continue editing or using it later, use the ‘save’ button,select ‘File’, ‘Save’

from the menu or pressc +S. If you created anew document, you will be

asked to enter a name for the document.If you already saved the document earlier on, you will not have to

enter its name anymore – the old version will simply be overwritten.– Different file types

Under very specific circumstances, you may want to save a document ina different file

type than its standard file type. E.g. if you intend to emailan essay to a person who does not own

Microsoft Word, sending it as aWord document may not be a good idea. In this

case, you can select

12 Introduction to


different file types at the time when you enter the file name.Usually,

you will select the file type by consensus: the recipient will tellyou what file types he can use and you will

select one of them. In thevast majority of cases, it will not be necessary to change the file type andwe will

only return to this subject in the section on PowerPoint.‘File’„

‘Save as…’Save the current

document under a new name.– Saving under a new nameIn some cases, you may want to save a file without

overwriting the oldversion, e.g. because you have made significant changes and you want to

preserve the original together with the revised version. In that case, youcan select ‘File’, ‘Save as’ from

the menu bar and enter a new filename.c +P‘File’„

‘Print…’Print the current document.Printing documentsPressing the ‘print’ button will immediately

print the entire document onthe standard printer, or on the printer that was used for the last

printout.Pressingc +Por choosing ‘File’, ‘Print’ from the menu

bar willallow to make a number of choices before printing, such as:·

which parts of the document

you want to print·

which printer you would like to use·

how many copies you would like to print‘File’„

‘Print preview…’Print preview.Preview

asingle page.View several pages.– Print previewBefore printing a document, you can check whether everything

looks theway you intended it to look. Pressing the ‘print preview’ button or selecting the

appropriate item from the menu bar will get you aminiature preview of the printed document. You

can choose to previeweach page individually, resulting in a more detailed preview, or you

canopt to preview several pages simultaneously. You will be able to choosehow many pages to

preview (up to a maximum of 24 pages) and howthey should be arranged. If you are satisfied, you

can print directly fromthe print preview by clicking on the ‘print’ button (see above), or youcan return to

the document for further changes by clicking on ‘close’.– SMR printer guide

If you are working in the SMR, selecting the correct printer is important.At the time of writing

(July 2002), Hewlett-Packard printers were usedfor simple black and white paper printouts. To

make a color printout or to print sheets for overhead projectors, you can use the Tektronix

Phaser printer. Be sure not to confuse the two: printing on the Tektronix printer is far more expensive

than making a normal printout. Once you haveselected a printer for your printouts, it will be used until

you select adifferent printer. For more information, ask the SMR duty manager or visit

the SMR homepage.„

www.fdewb.unimaas.nl/smr/

General Topics:

Getting Hooked Up 13●●●●●●●●●●●●

c + 4‘File’„

‘Close’Close the current document.Closing documentsIf you want to continue working e.g. in Word, but are

done with one particular document, you can close it. Keeping documents open whenyou are

not working on them will tie down computer memory and mayslow down your computer’s other

operations. There are lots of ways toclose a document. You can pressc + 4

or select ‘File’, ‘Close’from the menu bar. Alternatively, you could click on the ever-present‘close’

button that can be found in the top right corner of everywindow. Be aware that there may be

two such buttons if you have onlyone document open: the upper ‘close’ button closes the

application, e.g.Word, while the lower ‘close’ button closes only the current document.If you

have more than one document open, there will only be one close button, which will always close the

current document.Cutting, copying, pasting The most comfortable way to move

text and other items around in adocument or to transfer them between documents is to cut or copy

thedesired item and to paste it wherever it is needed. Before you can do so,you need to select what you

want to cut or copy. There are small, butsignificant differences between the procedures used

to select text inWord, cells in Excel and slide elements in PowerPoint. We will thereforediscuss

these techniques individually in the appropriate chapters.s + xor c +

x‘Edit’„

‘Cut’Cut

c + ior c +C

‘Edit’„

‘Copy’Copy– Cutting or copying?Once you have highlighted the text, cells or

objects that you want to cutor copy, you will have to choose between cutting and copying them.Both

methods will allow you to insert the object(s) in some other spot, but there is a crucial

difference between them: cut text disappears fromits original location while copied text

remains where it is. E.g. if youwant to move a passage from the middle of your essay to the end,

youwould usually cut it. If, on the other hand, you want to re-use a passagein some other essay, you

would copy it.Before you can insert the text, you need to move the cursor to its newlocation,

e.g. to the end of your essay. You can then push the ‘paste’ button, presss + i

or select ‘Edit’, ‘Paste’ from the menu bar.You can paste the same element as many times as you like.

s + ior c +V‘Edit’„

‘Paste’Paste

c +

Z‘Edit’„

‘Undo’UndoUndoing changesWhen you have done something

really disastrous, e.g. deleted all the textin your document, you can undo the changes one at a

time by clicking onthe ‘undo’ button. If you click on the right part of the ‘undo’ button ,you will

see a list of your last changes and you can undo as many of them as you like.

14 Introduction to


If it turns out that the changes were indeed justified, you can re-do them

by clicking the ‘redo’ button. If you use the ‘redo’ button immediatelyafter pressing the ‘undo’ button,

then your changes will be restored. If your last action however was not to ‘undo’ something, then

the ‘redo’ button will be deactivated. Instead, you can use the keyboard shortcut or the

appropriate ‘Edit’ menu item torepeat your last action. This will

notwork in all circumstances.c +Y‘Edit’„

‘Redo’Redo

c +

Y‘Edit’„

‘Repeat’Repeat

1e.g. ‘Help’„

‘Microsoft WordHelp’Launch the help system.The help systemIf you get stuck working in a Microsoft Office

application, simply hit1or push the ‘help’ button. What happens next depends on

thesettings of your computer. If the Office Assistant is installed, it willspring to action and offer

help. If the Office Assistant is not installed, pressing1will bring up the help system,

which is a combination of auser manual and a list of anticipated questions.

– The regular help systemThe help system will appear in the form of another window that will push

your current window to the side so that both windows are visible atthe same time. Its window is split

into two main areas: a navigation area,which helps you find the topics you want, and a text

area, where theactual help will be displayed.There are three different ways to get

information:The contents and index work just like you would expect them to: the‘contents’ area offers a list

of all the chapters and sections contained inthe user manual, while the index is an

alphabetical list of all the wordsused in the manual. The answer wizard is probably the

most useful tool:

General Topics:


it lets you search a list of topics for your

particular problem. Let’sassume you are working in Word and want to italicize text, but you

donot know how. Simply call up the help system, click on ‘answer wizard’and type in a couple of

keywords:When you push the ‘search’ button, the help system will return with alist of topics that may be of

relevance for you:In our case, the answer to our problem is right at the top of the list. If you have

trickier problems, you may have to go through a number of topics. To read any of the listed

topics, click on its title. The topic willthen be displayed in the adjacent area:Clippy, the best-known (andmost

hated) office assistant.– The office assistant The office assistant is a cartoon character that is

meant to help you doyour daily chores using Microsoft Office programs. It will take the

formof a paperclip unless you actively ‘hire’ another character as your assistant. When you press

1and the office assistant is installed onyour computer, you can ask questions in the

same way as when you aredealing with the answer wizard (see above).‘Help’„

‘Hide the OfficeAssistant’Furthermore, as long as the office assistant is visible on the screen, itwill monitor what

you are doing and will offer suggestions when itthinks that you could accomplish a task more

efficiently. This behavior may be quite useful while you are still learning the ropes, but after awhile, many

users get irritated with the office assistant. If you want toget rid of it, right-click on it and select

‘hide’ from the menu that popsup. Alternatively, you can select ‘Help’, ‘Hide the Office

Assistant’ fromthe menu bar.

16


Dialogue boxA window that requires your

decision on some topic. E.g.when you save a document, your PC needs to know under whatname it should save thedocument and will open awindow

where you can enter thefilename. This window would bea dialogue box.– Help in working with dialogue boxes

During some particular activities, there is a quicker way to get help.Let’s assume that you want to print

something. You have clicked on‘File’, ‘Print’ and a window has popped up where you can adjust someof

the print settings before printing. However, you are unfamiliar withsome of the advanced

settings. In almost all of thesedialogue boxes, youwill find a button with a question mark

in the upper right corner.Pushing this button will put you into ‘quick help’ mode. To

indicate youare in this mode, a question mark will be added to your mouse pointer . When you now click

on any element of the dialogue box, a brief description of its function will be displayed.For

example, clicking on the ‘ok’ button in quick help mode…will yield the

following explanation:●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

I m a g e : s i z e - i s n t - e v e r y t h i n g . c o . u k

M MI I C C

RROO

S S OOF

F T T W W

O

ORRDD

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

11..I I


T T I I OON N Microsoft Word is a word processor, a program

designed to handle awide variety of pieces of writing. You can use it to write anything from ashort

letter to reports of several hundred pages. It offers a broad range of formatting options and also

allows you to integrate images, graphs,tables, equations and all sorts of other objects into

your documents. You can start Microsoft Word by clicking on its icon on the desktop, or

alternatively by selecting it from the ‘Programs’ category of the Startmenu. Word will start as well if you

double-click on any Worddocument. Finally, you can also use the ‘new office document’

and‘open office document’ tools, which may be located in your quick launch bar or at

the top of your Start menu.‘Start’„

‘Programs’„

‘Microsoft Word’Create newOffice

docs.Open existingOffice docs. A few moments after launching Word, its window will

appear on your screen:The Word screenAs all Microsoft Office programs (and most other applications),

Wordfeatures the usual assortment of a menu bar, several toolbars and a status bar. Beyond that, the

screen is dominated by white space. This is where

20


you will be entering and

editing your documents.We will discuss most of the elements found on the toolbars and some of the

options on the menu bar in the latter chapters, so we will onlyexamine the status bar here. Word’s status

bar plays a more prominentrole than the status bars of other Office applications. It provides a

wealthof information about your document.Let’s investigate the individual

elements on the bar.·

Page 1: we are on the page labeled ‘1’.2·

Sec 1: we are in section 1 of our document.·

1/1: this is the first page of our document, and

there is one pagein total.·

At 2.5 cm: on the current page, we are 2.5 cm below the topmargin.

·

Ln 1: this is line 1 on the current page.·

Column 1: in the current line,

we are in the first column.3·

REC

,TRK

,EXT

,OVR

: a number of options are not active.4·

English (U.S.): we are using American English for our document.·

The two empty boxes represent

activities. The first one willinform you about the status of the automatic spell check, thesecond one

will report on saving and printing activities that occur in the background.

Writing a document in Word In producing a document in Word, you will usually follow these steps:1.

Create a new document. (Analogous to taking a fresh sheet of paper.)2.

Typing a first version of the document.3.Revising and editing it.4.

Applying formatting to your text.5.Preserving the document for later use by saving or

printing it.The distinction between these stages is in a way artificial. Once you haveacquainted

yourself with Word, you will certainly apply formattingwhile typing, and you will probably save your

document early on. Nonetheless, we will investigate these processes separately from eachother for

the sake of order.The following chapter is dedicated to the second and third step of the2

This is not necessarily the first page of the document, e.g. in books the first pages are usually labeled ‘i’, ‘ii’, ‘iii’ and soon, as they contain the cover

page, contents, etc. The first page of actual text is then labeled ‘1’.3

These are not ‘columns’ as such. Instead, it represents the

number of the next character. Here, we are at the beginning of the line, so the next character will be the first.4

Note that the options are gray; if

they are active, they will be black as the rest of the information on the status bar. We willdiscuss some of these options in later chapters.

Microsoft Word: Introduction 21●●●●●●●●●●●●

process: typing your document

and editing it. As it turns out, there isquite a bit to say about these deceivingly simple

activities. The thirdchapter is then concerned with the formatting of your document. Finally,saving

and printing in Word works just like in any other Officeapplication. Therefore, these activities

will not be discussed separately – we refer you to the second chapter of the general section,

‘CommonElements of Microsoft Office Programs’.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

22..E E N N T T E E RRI

I N N G G &&E E

DDI I T T I I N N G G T T

E E X X T T The present chapter discusses the peculiarities of typing adocument in Word, how you

canedit it and how the spellchecking works.In this chapter, we will discuss the basics of creating a document

inWord. While we assume that almost everyone has already seen akeyboard, there are a few peculiarities to

working with a Word processor such as Word, and these are discussed in the section on typing text.

Wethen discuss how you can edit your document. Finally, we discover whatWord does

while you are typing.Typing text There are few peculiarities about typing and even people that have never

used a keyboard before will quickly get used to the process. In thefollowing, we discuss a

series of loosely related issues.Want to learn touch-typing?If you have not typed a long text yet, it may

be a good idea to learn professional touch-typing instead of developing your own ‘hunt and

peck’ method of typing. Among the advantages are increased speed,fewer mistakes and reduced strain

on your hands and wrists. Also,learning it early on is easier than unlearning your own style

later.Fortunately, learning touch-typing is not overly difficult and it can bedone at zero cost.

TYP ING TUTORS ON THE WEBWe have dug out four automated

typing tutors that you can downloadfor free from the web. All of them have received good

grades from their users. Feel free to download them all and see which one

works best for you.Analytical Eye Typing Tutor This software can be downloaded and used for free.„

www.aspex.force9.co.uk/ae/ttutor KP Typing Tutor This software can be downloaded and used for free.„

www.fonlow.com/zijianhuang/kp/ TypingMaster Touch Typing Tutor 2002This is a professional application, which you

would have to buy. The producer does however offer a verygood (and free) demo on their website.„

www.typingmaster.com/tutor.htm

Clasys Elite Typing Tutor 2001This software is shareware: you can use and evaluate it for free for 30 days. If you want to continue using itafter 30 days, you will need

to pay a small registration fee.„

www.clasys.com/elitetyping.html

24 Introduction to Microsoft Office●●●●●●●●●●●●

The cursor

Before you start typing, we would like to introduce thecursor to you.The cursor is the

blinking, vertical line on your computer screen. It tellsyou where your next character will

appear. It also plays a role in editingyour document, as you will need to move it around to correct

mistakes,delete obsolete passages etc. We will discuss these functions in thesection on editing.Cursor

An indicator on your computer screen that shows where the nextcharacter will appear.Special function keys

Now that you know where your text will appear, we can start typing.While almost everyone

is familiar with the use of a keyboard by now,there are a few keys that have a special significance in

word processing programs. Below, we list the five most important ones and tell you whatthey are

used for and what they should not be used for.·

If you are still familiar with typewriters, you

may expect to usethe/key very often. But since Word takes care of the line breaks and

the distance between paragraphs, it is no longer necessary to press/

exceptonceat the end of every paragraph.·

It is no longer necessary to use thenbar for anythingother than separating

words. If you want to indent the first line of a paragraph, use theTkey instead.·

TheTkey (pronounced ‘tab’ key) can be used to convenientlyind

ent the first line of a paragraph or indeed the entire paragraph.·

TheB

key, called ‘backspace’, is used to delete charactersthat you have just written. Each time you press

B, the firstcharacter to the left of the cursor will be deleted.·

The

xkey has a similar function: it also deletes characters, butonly those to

the right of the cursor.Entering umlauts & accentsWhile all PCs at the University

of Maastricht use English keyboards, it isstill possible to write letters with umlaut marks and

accents. Certain key-combinations are reserved for this purpose:

Microsof

t Word: Entering & Editing Text 25●●●●●●●●●●●●

Sign Example Key combinationacute accent á, é’

+ the appropriate letter cedilla ç’+C

circumflex accent ê, î^+ the appropriate letter grave accent ò, ù

`+ the appropriate letter dieresis ä, ï “

+ the appropriate letter tilde ñ~+ the appropriate letter This also

has consequences for typing ordinary signs. When you pressone of the

combination keys’,`,^

,“, or ~, the sign will notappear until you enter the

next character. If the next character does notform an umlaut, then both signs will appear

simultaneously. E.g. typing“andNwill result in ‘"n’.If you want

to type a combination sign without any following letter, youneed to press the combination

key, followed byn. No spacewill be printed on the screen – the space is simply

used to release thecombination sign from limbo. The same holds if you want to type

acombination sign and a letter that would usually combine. E.g. to obtain‘"e’, press“

followed by an, then pressE.‘Insert’„

‘Symbol…’

If you need to use any characters or symbols that cannot be created usingthe above-

mentioned method, select ‘Insert’, ‘Symbol’ from the menu bar for a broader range of characters.

Insert and overtype modeYou can type in two different modes: insert and overtype. If you arewriting

in overtype mode, every new character that you type will replacethe character directly to the

right of the cursor. You should only use thismode when you deliberately want to replace a few letters.

Instead, it is best to use the insert mode most of the time. In insert mode, your newcharacters

will be inserted, pushing any characters to the right of thecursor further in that direction.

OvertypemodeInsert modeThe status bar tells you in which mode you currently are. If the overtypesign is

black, then you are in overtype mode; if it is gray, you are ininsert mode. You can switch between the two

modes by pressing theikey.Creating ordered lists

Entering a list of items is easy in Word. If you enter a line that startswith a number as ‘1)’ or ‘1.’, Word

will assume that you are writing alist. Once you press/, Word will indent the line

(and all followinglines) and automatically add the appropriate

number to the next line.

26 Introduction to


Press

/You can then enter the rest of the list without

having to worry about thenumbering. The advantage is that you can add and delete items andWord

will automatically adjust the numbering of all following items.Once you

are done with the list, press/twice to continue writingnormally.

Ordered list.‘Format’„

‘Bullets and Numbering…’Alternatively, you can begin and end an ordered list by

clicking on the‘ordered list’ button. To fine-tune your list, select ‘Format’, ‘Bullets and Numbering’:

you can then adjust the style of numbering and you willalso be able to specify whether the numbering

should start at ‘1’ or atany other position.Unordered list.Creating unordered listsUnordered lists work just like

ordered lists, but instead of numbering,they use bulleting. If you start a line with a dash ‘–’, Word

willautomatically set up an unordered list for you. You can also start a bulleted list by clicking on the

‘unordered list’ button. In all other respects, unordered lists work just like ordered lists.‘Insert’„

‘Footnote…’Adding footnotes and endnotesTo insert a footnote or endnote at any position in your

document, click on ‘Insert’, ‘Footnote’ on the menu bar. Before you can enter the actualnote, you

will need to specify whether it is a footnote or endnote, andwhether you want to use automated

numbering or not. Automatednumbering is a useful feature: if you use it, Word will keep

track of allfootnotes and endnotes in your document and will adjust their numbering accordingly.

Once you confirm your choice, you can starttyping your note. When you are done, click on ‘close’.

Inserting objects into your document Objects are items that can be included in text documents,

such as pictures and charts. Microsoft Word can handle a broad variety of objects and there are three

different ways to insert them into an existingdocument:·

pasting them from other applications·

inserting them from a file or library·

creating them inside Words + ior c +V‘Edit’„

‘Paste’Paste– Pasting objectsThe easiest way to insert documents in Microsoft Word is to paste

them:copy the object in the other application and paste it into Word by

Microsof

t Word: Entering & Editing Text 27●●●●●●●●●●●●

clicking on the ‘paste’ button, pressings + ior selecting ‘Edit’,‘Paste’ from the menu

bar. But while this method may be fast, it may not be the best option.‘Edit’„

‘Paste special…’

In fact, Word is able to insert the same object in different ways. E.g. anExcel graph can be insert as a

‘Microsoft Excel Chart Object’ or as a picture. The former will allow you to edit the graph

even when you nolonger have the Excel file, but this advantage comes at the price of

anincreased file size. The latter option will simply include a static pictureof the graph, which has the

same quality, but can no longer be edited asan Excel chart. Similar choices exist for most objects

that you can paste.When you select ‘Edit’, ‘Paste special’ from the menu bar, you will be presented with a

window where all possible options are listed.Word also provides a brief explanation for each option that

is meant toguide you in the selection process.– Using files or libraries

Inserting objects from a file is a very reliable method, presuming thatWord knows how to deal

with the information. You can e.g. insert agreat variety of images as well as documents

from other MicrosoftOffice applications. But Microsoft Word does not know how to dealwith every

file. If you do not get the desired results, try opening theobject in the program in which it was

originally created, then pasting itinto your Word document.‘Insert’„

‘Picture’„

‘Fromfile…’‘Insert’„

‘Object…’To insert an image from a file, select ‘Insert’,

‘Picture’, ‘From file’. Toinsert any other sort of object, selecting ‘Insert’, ‘Object’ and thenswitch to

the ‘Create from file’ category.‘Insert’„

‘Picture’„

‘ClipArt…’You can also insert pictures

from Microsoft’s ClipArt library, whichcomes with Microsoft Office. To do so, select

‘Insert’, ‘Picture’, ‘ClipArt’. You will then be able to select illustrations from a broad

range of categories. You can also insert sounds and movies from the ClipArtgallery, but these are

obviously useless if you plan to print the document.

28


‘Insert’„

‘Object…’

– Creating new objectsFinally, you can also create a broad array of new objects inside Word.To

do so, select ‘Insert’, ‘Object’ from the menu bar, and then choosethe type of object that

you would like to create.5

Because of the technical implications of this process, creating

newobjects in Word is not an entirely stable process. It may be wiser tocreate graphs and other

objects the traditional way, by using e.g. adrawing program to create the graph and then pasting

the result into your Word document.Editing your text In the following, we discuss how you

can move around in your document to add additional text, and how you can select parts of your

work so that you can move, format or delete it.Moving around in a document

You can move your cursor to a new location in the text simply byclicking on that location with your

mouse pointer. But once you startserious revisions, you may find that it can be quite tiring if you

have tograb the mouse every time you want to jump to another spot. Instead,you

could use the arrow keysu,d,l

andr, but this is rather slow.Fortunately, there are some keyboard

shortcuts that allow you to movearound quickly in a document:·

c + land

c + rallow you to move wordwise in eachdirection.·

c + uand

c + dtake you to the beginning and end of the current paragraph.·

h

andetake you to the beginning and end of the currentline respectively.·

c + hor c + eenable you to jump directly to the beginning

and end of the document.·

MandWscroll your document by

one screen-length ineach direction.·

c + Mor c + M

take you to the previous or next page in the document.Once you have arrived at the desired location,

you can add additionaltext or alter the original text.Selecting text If, instead, you want to move,

format or delete parts of your work, youneed to select the section of your document to which the

changes should be applied. To select text using the mouse, follow these three steps:5

Which objects you can generate depends on the software configuration of you computer.

Microsoft

Word: Entering & Editing Text 29●●●●●●●●●●●●

1)

Move your mouse pointer to the beginning of the text that youwant to highlight.2)

Press the left mouse button and keep it pressed while…3)you move the mouse pointer

to the end of the text.Instead of using the mouse, you can also use the keyboard:1)

Move the cursor to the beginning of the text.2)Press and hold theskey while…3)

moving the cursor around with the arrow keysu,d

,landr.This allows you to highlight one character at

a time. You can speed upthe process by holdingsandc

while using the arrow keys. Thiswill highlight one word at a time.Some

additional timesavers:·

Pressings + hor s + e

highlights everythingfrom your current position to the beginning or end of the currentline.·

Pressings + Mor s + Wselects larger portions of text.·

Pressing

c + s + hor c + s + ehighlights everything from your current position to the

top or bottom of the document.·

Pressingc + s + uor c + s + d

selectseverything from your current position to the top or bottom of the paragraph.Once you selected all

desired elements, you can continue to cut and paste them normally. (See ch. 2 of the general section,

‘CommonElements of Microsoft Office programs’, for more details.) Furthermore,you can delete

entire blocks of text by selecting them and pressingx.Finally, you will also need to

select text if you plan to format it (see nextchapter).While you are typing…… Word is busy, too: it

checks what you are typing. Word willautomatically correct some of the most common typing

demons. Wordswith two capital letters, e.g. ‘EXample’, will quietly be fixed, ‘acheive’ becomes

‘achieve’ again, and so forth. Furthermore, it will alert you tomore complex issues by underlining

them in red or green.

30 Introduction to


Spelling mistakes…Red underlining indicates a possible

spelling mistake. We say ‘possible’simply because Word’s dictionary is not all-

encompassing. Certainscientific terms still elude it, as do certain place names, names of personsand

companies, etc. Still, it is worth checking out each term with redunderlining.When you right-click on the

underlined word, Word will offer somesuggestions regarding the correct spelling. You can then

select one of thesuggestions or you can tell Word to:·

add the unknown word to its dictionary

(so it does not show up asa mistake any more)·

ignore the word (in this

particular document)·

automatically correct this mistake in the future·

or to switch to a different language… and grammar troubleSimilarly, green underlining

indicates a possible grammatical mistake.Invariably, the grammar check is less reliable

then the spell-checker:computers still have trouble to identify all the different meanings that

wecan express in a language. Therefore, they do not always know what isright and what is wrong. E.g.

how about a bit of Yoda-talk 6

:“Jumbled this sentence is.”Word is not the slightest bit distressed by

the above sentence. Not evenwhen you write “jumbled is sentence this” instead. It does however a

pretty good job in other areas, such as:·

capitalization errors·

confusion of homophones, e.g. ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’·

hyphenation·

multiple negation·

passive sentences·

punctuation·

subject-verb agreement·

long or wordy sentencesAs with spelling mistakes, you only need to

right-click on the underlinedword to see some suggestions. Word also tells you why it

thinks thatyour sentence is wrong.Spelling and grammar statusWord provides you with a way

to check the spelling and grammar statusof a document. The second icon on the right on the

status bar tells youwhether you still need to check your document:6

Yoda is not only a mighty Jedi-master

and skillful manipulator of the English language, he is also a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd.

Microsoft Word:

Entering & Editing Text 31●●●●●●●●●●●●

·

If it displays a moving pen,

then Word is still busy evaluatingyour document. You will have to wait a few

moments for theresults.·

If you find a check mark, then there is reason to rejoice:

Wordwas not able to find spelling or grammar mistakes. Good job!·

More frequently, you will see this icon: Word has found at leastone mistake somewhere.

While it is entirely possible that Word ismisguided in its analysis, it still pays off to manually check

your document before you print it or hand it in.7‘Tools’„

‘Spelling andGrammar…’Initiate a complete

spelling andgrammar check.Doing a complete spelling and grammar check Once you are done with a

document, you may want to do a completecheckup. You can launch such a check by

pressing the ‘spelling andgrammar’ button on the standard toolbar, by selecting

‘Tools’, ‘Spellingand grammar’ from the menu bar or by pressing7

. Word will thentake you past all the mistakes it found, giving you the opportunity

tocorrect or ignore every single one.Writing documents in a different language

If you are using an English version of Word, then it assumes by defaultthat you are writing an

English document.7

Similarly, a Dutch versionWord will assume you are using Dutch,

and so forth. Writing documentsin another language will understandably confuse Word.

There are two possibilities: if you are starting a new document in a language that isknown to Word, it will

usually recognize this after a few words andadjust the language setting for the

document accordingly.8

In that case,Word will proceed to check the spelling in the

appropriate language.In three cases however, Word will not be able to make the adjustment:‘Tools’

„

‘Language’„

‘SetLanguage…’1)You may be using a different dialect of a particular

language.E.g. you may be writing American English while Word expectsBritish

English. You can check which language Word expects byhaving a look at the status bar. If that is not the

language that youwant to use, you can change it. To do so, select everything thatyou have

written so far, then click on ‘Tools’, ‘Language’, ‘SetLanguage’ from the menu bar and choose

the appropriatelanguage. Blue checkmarks appear next to the languages for which Word

has a dictionary.2)If you are just using a few terms from another language in

anotherwise English document, Word will not recognize them asforeign-language terms.

In that case, the best option is to adjustthe language setting for these words. Simply highlight those

particular terms, select ‘Tools’, ‘Language’, ‘Set Language’ from7

Whether that is British or American

English depends on where the version was released. PCs in the SMR are usually setto British English by default.8

It is possible that Word is slightly

off, e.g. mistaking Canadian French for French French.


the menu bar and choose the appropriate language.3)Finally, it may be the case that Word simply

does not have theappropriate dictionary installed. The English version of Wordcomes with

dictionaries for all dialects of English, French andSpanish. If you are using Dutch or German terms,

Word will belost. In that case, you can either ignore the spellchecker or turn itoff. To turn it off,

highlight the offending words, select ‘Tools’,‘Language’, ‘Set Language’ from the menu bar

and check theoption ‘do not check spelling or grammar’.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

3 3..F F

OORR M M A AT T T

T I I N N G G Y Y

OOU U RR DD

OOC C U U M ME E N N T T

This chapter discusses ways tochange the appearance of your document.Good formatting can support your

message and give your document a personal touch. In this chapter, we will discuss several ways to

formatdocuments. We will begin with formatting options that affect individualwords, and then move

on to talk about formatting at the paragraph anddocument level.c + s +F

Adjusting the appearance of text Font This changes the typeface of your text. There is usually a

broadassortment of typefaces available, but the general choice is betweenthree different types

of fonts: serifs, sans serifs and decorative fonts.Serif typefaces are fonts that feature small

decorative lines at their stemand shaft. These lines help guide the eye along the line of text, makingserif

fonts better suited for long pieces of writing. The following fonts,among others, belong

to this category:Sans serif fonts lack the decoration and are therefore very clear. They area

good choice for text that should draw the attention of the reader, suchas titles and labels. The following

fonts are sans serif typefaces:Fonts in the decorative category do not contain letters

and are thereforenot suited for the setting of text. Instead, they offer a variety of symbolsfor

illustrative purposes. WingDings, WingDings 2, WingDings 3 andWebDings fall into this

category.The default font is ‘Times New Roman’. As a serif font, it is very easyto read in print.

c + s +PFont sizeThis changes the size of your text. The default

size for text is 12 pt.9

andis widely used because it guarantees readability.9

This size is also usually used for writing assignments, essays, etc. Note that some block coordinators may require other sizes – please check the

requirements for each assignment individually.


Bold

c +BItalics

c +IUnderline

c +UFont styleThese options influence the appearance of your text. You

can set your text inboldfaceanditalics, and you can underline your

text. Byconvention, underlining is no longer used to highlight words; instead,text is

set in boldface or italics. Underlining is now used to indicateInternet links instead.Clicking on the left part of the button

will change the color of your text to the color indicatedon the button.Font color To change the color of the text,

click on the ‘font color’ button. This willchange the color of your text to whatever color is

indicated on the button. (It is indicated in the bar below the ‘A’; in our case, it is black.)If you however do

not want your text to appear in that particular color,you can click on the right part of the button to

expand the color menu.If you wish to use another color,click on the right part of the button.Highlights your text.

Highlighting text Clicking on the highlight button will allow you to mark importantsenten

ces or words by highlighting them. Clicking on the left side of the button will add the corresponding

background color to your text. If youdo not like the default color, click on the right side of the

button tochoose between bright and dark shades of red, yellow, green, blue andgray, as well as turquoise,

pink, violet, teal and black.‘Format’„

‘Font…’Further options…

The options described above are clearly the most important options. Butalso Word offers a number of other

choices for your text that can beaccessed by clicking on ‘Format’, ‘Font’ on the menu bar. Under

the‘font’ category, you find most of the previously discussed options, aswell as a range of

underline styles and typesetting effects. In the‘character spacing’ section, you can magnify the

font, increase the space between characters and raise or lower the text. Finally, the ‘text

effects’section allows you to animate your text, which is obviously only usefulwhen you distribute the

document electronically.Formatting entire paragraphsParagraph formatting is formatting that

cannot be applied to singlewords but only to entire paragraphs. The two most important

paragraphformats, its alignment and indentation, are available as shortcuts, the

General Topics: Getting

Hooked Up 35●●●●●●●●●●●●

remainder of the options is available through menu settings.

Paragraph alignment Here, you can choose the alignment for the current paragraph. You

canalign it to the left or right margin, you can center each row so that thedistance to both margins is

equally big, or you can justify your text,aligning it with both margins simultaneously.Left

c +LCenter

c +ERight

c +

RJustify

c +JIncreaseindentDecreaseindentIndentation

The ‘decrease indent’ and ‘increase indent’ buttons allow you to adjustthe

indentation of text.‘Format’„

‘Paragraph…’Paragraph spacing

This feature is located in the paragraph options – you can access it byclicking on ‘Format’,

‘Paragraph’ on the menu bar. It determines howlarge the gap between paragraphs should be. E.g.

if you want to have afull line’s distance between all paragraphs, you could send the spacingafter the

paragraph to 12 pt. It is preferable to use this setting instead of pressing/

several times between paragraphs, as it is easier toadjust the paragraph spacing once for

the entire document than to addadditional line feeds throughout your text.‘Format’„

‘Paragraph’Line distanceThis feature is also located in the paragraph options – select ‘Format’,‘Paragraph’ on the

menu bar to access it. With this setting, you caninfluence the distance between lines. E.g. writing

assignments usuallyrequire a 1.5 line distance for improved readability. You can use the preset levels

‘single’, ‘1.5 lines’ and ‘double’ or create a custom setting.Recycling your work

Once you have created a set of formats that you like, Word allows you toeasily recycle them using two

methods: the format painter andformatting styles.The format painter

The format painter allows you to transfer formatting from one paragraphto another. Its advantage is

speed: if you need to transfer formatting onlyonce, then this is the faster solution:1.

Position the cursor in the paragraph whose formatting you wouldlike to copy.


2.

Press the ‘format painter’ button on the standard toolbar. A paintbrush will be added to

your mouse pointer .Press this button to transfer formatting to another part of your document.3.

You can now select the text to which the formatting should beapplied.Before: After:

Formatting stylesStyles allow you to save a particular set of formats and recall

itwhenever you it is needed. This is the better solution of you wish toapply a formatting again

and again throughout your document. To save astyle:1.Position your cursor inside the paragraph

whose formattingshould be preserved, …2.click on the style box on the

formatting toolbar and …3.enter a descriptive name for your style.Once you have saved a

style, you can easily apply it again:1.Select the text to which the style should be

applied, and …2.select the appropriate style’s name from the style box.

Changing the page layout Finally, there are options that affect the entire document, or at leastsignificant parts of it.

There are two groups of settings in this category:general page settings, such as the paper size, as

well as the header andfooter settings.General page settings

Among the general page settings are:·

the paper size, e.g. ‘A4’·

the paper orientation, ‘portrait’ vs. ‘landscape’·

the width of the four margins‘File’„

‘Page setup…’All of these settings can be adjusted by clicking on ‘File’, ‘Page setup’.The first two options can

be found in the ‘paper size’ category, while thelatter option belongs to the ‘margins’ category.

General Topics:


‘View’„

‘Header and Footer’

Header and footer To edit your document’s header and footer, select ‘View’, ‘Header

andFooter’ from the menu bar. Your view will shift to a section in the upper margin of the page and an

additional toolbar will appear. Everything thatyou enter here will appear on each and

every page.The toolbar enables you to insert predefined variables, such as the pagenumber or

the date. You can also insert complete headers, such as ‘pagex of y’ using the ‘Insert

AutoText’ button.Insert the page number.Insert complete headers.‘File’„

‘Page setup…’

Finally, it is also possible to obtain different headers for the first page, aswell as for odd and even

pages. You can activate differentiated headers by pressing the ‘page setup’ button and then

selecting ‘different first page’ and/or ‘different odd and even’.Once you are done manipulating

the header and footer, you can return tothe normal view by pressing ‘close’.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●


M MI I C C

RROO

S S OOF

F T T E E

X X C C

E E LL

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

11..I I


T T I I OON N Microsoft Excel is aspreadsheet program

, a program that allows you toenter all sorts of information, relate the individual bits of information

toanother, and to use them for calculations and analyses. Most Excel usersonly find out about its full

capabilities after they have been using it for awhile, so we will get started right away… ‘Start’„

‘Programs’„

‘Microsoft Excel’Create newOffice docs.Open existingOffice docs. Starting Excel

To start Excel, double-click on the Microsoft Excel icon on the desktop.Alternatively, you will

find Microsoft Excel in the Start menu under ‘Programs’. Excel will start as well if you

double-click on any Exceldocument. Finally, you also can use the ‘new office document’

and‘open office document’ tools. Within a few seconds, you will see theExcel

window on your screen:Excel’s window is dominated by cells.CellsContainers of information, whichcan be filled with text,

numbersor formulas.Besides the ever-present menu bar and toolbars, you will notice that thescreen is

dominated by heaps of small boxes arranged in rows andcolumns. Thesecells

are the cornerstones of spreadsheet programs. Cellsare containers for information.

There are few restrictions on the kind of information a cell can contain:

42


·

numbers of all kinds, e.g. 2.638, ½, 75%,15

10653.1´·

date or time information,

e.g. 01/01/2002, or 12:41:03·

currency values, e.g. € 1,500.00·

text, e.g. “Maastricht

University rules!”So far, this is not particularly exciting: any table could do that. But

theadvantage of spreadsheet programs is that you can also fill cells withformulas, and Excel will

automatically do the calculations for you.Before we turn towards these advanced functions of

cells, we investigateanother aspect: their order. All cells are arranged in rows and columns,as you

can see on the screen. These rows and columns, in turn, arelabeled – columns are labeled with

letters, rows are labeled withnumbers. Each cell can be identified by its column letter and rownumber:Worksheet

A page in your Excel document;contains 65,536 rows and 256columns of cells.In identifying cells, we first list the column,

then the row. So the top leftcell is number ‘A1’, not ‘1A’. In total, there are 65,536 rows and 256columns10

. Together, these cells make up one ‘worksheet’ (or simply‘sheet’).Beyond cells, there are three

other important features:·

The name box, which is located directly above the worksheetarea.

It tells you where you currently are on the worksheet, e.g. incell ‘A1’, and it allows you to give your

cells names (see ch. 2):·

The formula bar, which helps you enter information and formulasinto

cells. It is located to the right of the name box and looksquite unspectacular:·

Finally, the sheet selector. Believe it or not, some people think that the 16,777,216 cells

contained in one sheet are not sufficientfor their needs. Luckily, you can have as many sheets as

you like – by default, Excel will create three empty sheets when you opena new document. The sheet

selector, which is located right beneath the actual worksheet, helps you to select the sheet

onwhich you want to work.10

By the way, the column after ‘Z’ is labeled ‘AA’, followed by ‘AB’ and so forth till you get to column ‘IV’

Microsoft

Excel: Introduction 43●●●●●●●●●●●●

In the following three chapters, we will

investigate most of the basicfunctions of Excel. The next chapter discusses how you can enter

information in Excel and how you can use this information incalculations. The third chapter covers

the different formatting optionsthat are available in Excel. Finally, the fourth chapter

discusses twoadvanced topics: a) it builds the foundation for various data analysistasks in

Quantitative Methods, and b) it discusses how you can displayinformation graphically

using Excel’s chart wizard.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

22..

E E N N T T E E RRI

I N N G G DD

A AT T A A &&M M

A AK K I I N N G G C C

A ALLC C U U LL A AT T I I

OON N S S Here, we learn how you canenter information in Excel andhow you can use this

informationin calculations.This chapter covers the basic function of Excel: to receive data and tomanipulate it

using calculations. We start out by discovering differentways to enter data, and then develop the

concepts of formulas andfunctions.Entering informationExcel stores information in cells. Each cell

is meant to contain only one piece of information, e.g. a number (however large that number

may be)or a sentence. To enter data in a worksheet, we first need to determinewhich cell should

receive the information. Once we have selected a cell,we can start typing.Selecting cells

You can select cells using your mouse or keyboard. If you are using themouse, simply place

your mouse pointer on top of the desired cell andclick once. (Note that the mouse pointer takes the

form of a crosswhen you are working with cells.)1) 2) 3)The cell that is currently being used, or

the ‘active’ cell, is surrounded bya thick black border.Alternatively, you can use the keyboard to

move from your current position to another cell on the worksheet: simply use the arrow keys

u,d,landr

to get to your destination.Entering informationOnce you are ‘in’ the cell of your choice,

you can start enteringinformation simply by typing.Be aware that the information you are entering is

not placed in the celluntil you confirm that you are done. You can do so by·

pressing

/. This will place the information in the cell and itwill also take you to the cell directly below

your current position.·

pressingT. This will place the information in the cell and

itwill also take you to the cell directly to the right of your current position.The only difference

is where you end up next. If you are entering a

46


column of information, you should use/because it will move youto the next cell in your

current column. Conversely, if you are entering arow of information, useT

.Because Excel does not place any information in the cell until youconfirm it, you can always step back if you

are making a mistake. Let’sassume that you are entering information in a cell that already

containsinformation, and that you do not want to overwrite the old information.In this case, you

can simply press~to annul what you were doing.Be aware that Excel is

programmed to recognize certain types of information, such as dates, times, currency values,

percentages andfractions. If you e.g. enter ‘€ 1625’, Excel will recognize that you areentering a

currency value and will format it as such.Entering seriesEntering information can be quite tedious,

especially when you areentering information that repeats or follows a pattern. Fortunately,

Excelcan fill in such series for you. Let’s assume that you want to create atable of quarterly profits

for the years 1990 – 2000. Usually, we wouldhave to enter the entire series: 1990, 1991, 1992, and

so forth. Similarly,we would have to label cells ‘1st

quarter’, ‘2nd

quarter’, etc. Fortunately,there is a shortcut. Instead of typing the entire series, we only

enter thefirst item, e.g. ‘1st

quarter’. We then select this cell, so that it issurrounded by the thick black

border again: Note that there is a black dot in the lower right corner. When you placeyour mouse pointer

above this dot, it will change from the familiar selection cross to a black plus sign . When it

takes this shape, youcan continue a series by pressing and holding the left mouse buttonwhile

dragging the mouse in the desired direction:

Microsoft Excel: Entering

Data & Making Calculations 47●●●●●●●●●●●●

While you are doing so, Excel

tells you what it will place in the last cell,so that you know when to stop. Once your series has reached its

desiredlength, release the left mouse button and Excel will place the appropriateinformation in the

cells.In our first example, Excel recognized what it was supposed to do.However, this is not always the case:

when we enter ‘1990’ and try tocomplete the series as described above, Excel is clueless:To be

precise, it does not know how the series is supposed to work: isthe next cell supposed to be 1991, 1995,

2000 or something else? Thiscan be remedied by providing Excel with a hint: entering the

second cell,too. If you select both entries, Excel can continue the series for you:

Using Excel for calculations: formulasWhat distinguishes a spreadsheet program such as Excel from a

simpletable is its ability to perform calculations with the information that youentered. To

make a calculation, you need to place a formula in a cell.To distinguish a formula from a

normal bit of information, everyformula starts with an equal sign ‘=’. The simplest formulas

contain basic arithmetic operations, such as additions, subtractions,multiplications and divisions. An

example would be=2+2If you enter this formula in a cell and press/

, you will see thefollowing: Note that the actual cell contains the result, while the formula can be

48 Introduction to


found in the formula bar. This keeps the worksheet from becomingclutter

ed. If you want to edit a formula at a later stage, select theappropriate cell, then press2

or click on the formula bar.ARITHMETIC OPERATORS

The arithmetic operators in Excel are slightly different than the ones weare used to from

mathematical formulas.Operation Operator ExampleAddition+plus sign

=2+2

Result: 4

Subtraction – minus sign

=3–5Result: –2

Multiplication*asterisk

=2*3Result: 6

Division/slash

=5/2Result: 2.5

Raising to power ^hat

=3^2Result: 9

Excel follows the arithmetic rules of precedence when calculating theresult of a

formula. This implies e.g. that powers have precedence beforemultiplication and division, and

that the latter have precedence beforeaddition and subtraction:=2+4/2will yield 4, not 3. You can

prioritizecertain parts of equations by enclosing them in brackets:=(2+4)/2

willyield 3.You can have more than one pair of brackets in the same term, e.g.=((2+4)/2+6)/18

. As you include more and more brackets, it becomesharder and harder to keep track of them. That’s

why Excel assignsdifferent colors to pairs of brackets, depending on their level. The first pair of

brackets will be black. If you open another pair inside the first pair, it will be green. If you open a pair of

brackets inside the first two,then the third pair will be purple, and so forth. Also, whenever you

closea bracket, Excel will briefly indicate the corresponding opening bracket,so that

you know which pair of brackets you just closed.Referring to cells (Part 1)

Formulas are not limited to simple numbers, you can include cells inyour calculations,

too. To do so, use their cell address, the combinationof column letter and row

number. An example would be the addition of cells A1 and A2 depicted here:

Microsoft Excel: Entering Data & Making

Calculations 49●●●●●●●●●●●●

This has one huge advantage: when you change the contents of, say,

cellA2, cell A3 adjusts automatically. Every time you enter newinformation, all formulas will

be recalculated – no further action isrequired on your part.CIRCULAR

REFERENCESWhen you enter a formula that includes a cell reference, Excel uses thecontent

of that cell for the calculation. Say, if you were to enter theformula=A1*2

in cell A2, Excel would obviously need to read thecontent of A1 to calculate the value of A2.

Let’s assume that A1 in turncontains the formula=A2-3. So to calculate A2, Excel needs

to knowthe value of A1. But to calculate A1, Excel needs to know A2. It’s likethe hen and the egg: a circle

with no clear beginning.The essence is that no formula can refer to its own result – doing socreates a

circular reference. If you create such a circular reference,Excel will immediately

warn you: besides opening the automatic helpsystem to explain what is going on, Excel will indicate

where thecircular reference is to be found.You will then need to break the circle by

changing the formula in one of the involved cells.FunctionsObviously, the scope of primary

arithmetic operations is limited. Somecalculations would become very tedious, while

others would becompletely impossible to realize if we only had these five operations atour disposal.

Imagine you would like to sum all cells between A1 andA30. If you had to write

=A1+A2+A3+A4+…+A30you would get tired soon. That’s why

Excel offers a range of functionsthat extend the scope of formulas while simplifying the

actual work.Functions always look the same:NAME (parameter 1,

parameter 2, …)ParametersBits of information thatfunctions use in calculationsA function starts with its

own name. Any information that the functionrequires is then included in brackets. These so-called

parametershave a predetermined order 11

and they are separated by commas.

Depending onthe information that a function needs, you may have to enter up to 30

parameters (although most functions make do with just 1 to 3).11

The appendix contains a list of

functions, which specifies each function’s parameters and their order.

50 Introduc

tion to Microsoft Office●●●●●●●●●●●●

Let’s illustrate this with some examples:One

of the simplest functions is the functionpi(), whose sole purpose isto

return the number p

, 3.141… Becausep

does not depend on anyoutside

factors, the function does not require any parameters:PI()We can include functions in our

formulas like normal terms, e.g.=2.5^2*PI()will calculate the area of a circle with a

radius of 2.5 units (19.635square-units). If you simply want the result of a function, you

will stillneed to enter an equal sign:=PI()will return 3.141592654.One of the most

useful functions issum(), which sums all termscontained in the brackets. It requires at

least one parameter:SUM (number 1, number 2, …)You can use

sum()with ordinary numbers, but you can also enter cellreferences, e.g.

=SUM (251, A1, C3)What’s more: you can place functions inside functions:

=SUM (10, PI())Referring to cells (Part 2)So far, we have only dealt with single cells at a

time. But what do you dowhen you want to work with a whole range of cells? Let’s come back tothe

example where we wanted to sum all cells between A1 and A30. Sofar, we could write

=A1+A2+A3+A4+…+A30or we could write

=SUM(A1,A2,A3,A4,…,A30)but neither of them seems very appealing.

Fortunately, there is ashorthand for including several cells simultaneously: quote the

addressof the top left cell and the address of the bottom right cell, separated by acolon. In our example, we

would write A1:A30. This shorthand can beused with many different functions, such as

sum():=SUM(A1:A30)You can include as many cells as you like, e.g.

=SUM(A22:Y7453)would sum all 185,800 cells between A22 and Y7453.You do not need to

enter cell references manually. While you are

Microsoft Excel: Entering

Data & Making Calculations 51●●●●●●●●●●●●

entering your formula, you

can simply use the mouse to select the rangeof cells that you want to refer to. Excel will then enter

the appropriatecell reference for you:1) 2) 3)INTERNATIONAL

DIFFERENCESThere are obvious differences between the English version

of Excel andversions in other languages. Not only have all menus and dialogues been translated, the

function names have been translated, too. Some of the function names are easy to translate, e.g.

sum()becomessom()inthe Dutch version. Others, however, differ significantly

from the directtranslation. It is therefore best to use an English version of Excel.Additiona

l problems can result from the use of different decimalindicators: if you are using a non-English version

of Windows, thenyour system most likely uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal point.Two

things change when your computer uses a decimal comma:1.Even when you are using an

English version of Excel, you willneed to use a decimal comma. E.g.=2,5^2*PI()2.

As a result, parameters in functions arenot divided by a comma, but by

a semicolon, e.g.=SUM (251; A1; C3)The ‘function wizard’

You can enter functions just like any other formula: simply select thedesired cell and start typing. For

simple functions likepi()or sum(), thisis certainly the easiest and

quickest way. But many functions requireseveral parameters, accept only certain values or

are simply hard toremember. The ‘function wizard’ is there to help you enter suchfunctions.‘Insert’

„

‘Function…’Start the function wizard.Whenever you want to enter a function, be it in the middle of a

formulaor in an empty cell, press the ‘paste function’ button to call up thefunction wizard. This

will bring up the selection screen, where you canchoose the appropriate function:

52 Introduc


All functions are grouped together in

categories such as ‘statisticalfunctions’, ‘math and trigonometry functions’, and so forth. This

usuallyallows you to find the function you are looking for pretty quickly. If youdo not know which

category a function belongs to, you can use the all-encompassing ‘all functions’ category. A list

of the most recently usedfunctions is also available.Once you have selected the

category in the left list, you will be able toselect the desired function in the right list. For each function

you select,a brief explanation will be given below the two lists.For now, let’s assume that we

want to round the number contained incell A1 to three digits after the decimal point.

To do so, we select theround()function from the ‘math and trigonometry’ list and click

‘ok’.This takes us to a second window where you have the opportunity toenter all the details. Excel

lists the required parameters, as well as anyoptional parameters (there are none

in our example), tells you what eachof them means and reminds you what type of information is

required. Inour example, the first parameter is the number that we want to round,and it obviously needs

to take the form of a number.

Microsoft Excel:

Entering Data & Making Calculations 53●●●●●●●●●●●●

Since we want to round the number in cell A1 to 3 digits, we enter ‘A1’in the first field and 3 in the

second field. Instead of writing ‘A1’, wecould also have selected the cell A1 with the mouse. If

you want toselect a cell that is not visible on the screen, press the ‘cell selection’ button in the

right corner of any field and the window will shrink,allowing you to freely select any cells. Once you are

done, press the‘transfer references’ button to return to the function wizard.To select cells when working inthe

function wizard, push this button.Once you are done, you cantransfer the selected cellreference to the Wizard by pressing this button.

While you enter the information, Excel will check your input and, if necessary, give you feedback.

If, e.g. you were to enter text instead of anumber, you would get the following error message12

:Once Excel has sufficient information, you will see a preliminary resulton the screen. You can

then confirm your choice by click ‘ok’.You can also use the function wizard to edit existing functions.

Simplyselect a cell that contains a function and press the ‘paste function’ button.

Parameter typesDifferent functions require different sorts of information. Broadlyspeakin

g, there are several different types of parameters, such asnumbers, text and logical statements.

Parameters of the type ‘number’and ‘text’ are self-explanatory. But if you lack experience with

programming languages or spreadsheets, you will not have encounteredlogi

cal statements so far.Logical statementA comparison of two pieces of information that is either corrector incorrect, e.g. 0 = 1

is such astatement, and it is incorrect.A logical statement is a statement that compares one bit of informationwith

another to check whether they fulfill a certain condition. For instance,A2 = 2

is such a statement. Here, the two bits of informationare the cell ‘A2’ and the number ‘2’, and the

condition is that both bitsof information must be equal to each other. Another

statement would beA2 > 2. In this case, the condition is that the cell ‘A2’ must

contain avalue that is larger than 2.Excel will try to determine whether a condition has

been met or not. Inour second example,A2 > 2, the condition would be met if the cell

‘A2’contained the value ‘3’, because 3 > 2. In that case, we say that a12

See below for an interpretation of the

different error messages.

54 Introduction to


statement istrueor correct. If, however, the cell ‘A2’

contained thevalue ‘1’, then the condition would not be met. We would say that thestatement is

falseor incorrect.The decision whether a statement is true or false is the result of such

alogical statement. Just as=4+3will return 7,=1>0

will return true. This‘response’ can then be used in logical functions e.g. for makingdecision

s.Logical statements and functions will be discussed in more detail duringyour Quantitative

Methods classes.A selection of functionsFinding the right function for the right task

is not always easy.Therefore, we have compiled a selection of functions that are usefulduring

the first blocks of your study. The functions are grouped intothree categories (mathematical,

statistical and logical functions) and can be found in the appendix.Referring to cells (Part 3)

When you are editing cells, you will notice that formulas quickly become hard to read if they contain

several terms. While it may not be possible to simplify all formulas, you can make them easier

tounderstand by giving your cells names. It is possible to christen cells inthree steps:1.

Select the cell or cells that you want to label, …2.click on the name box and …3.

enter a name, followed by/.Once you have named your cells, you can refer to them in

formulas bytheir name. In our example, we would be able to write=SUM(profit)

,which is much easier to understand then e.g.=SUM(B4:B21).

ErrorsSometimes, Excel encounters an error when it is calculating the formulasthat we enter. There can

be two causes for this: either we did not enter the formula correctly, or a cell that we are referring to

contains invalidinformation. An example for the first type of error would be a

simplespelling mistake:=SIM(A1:A200)instead of =SUM(A1:A200)

. Anexample for the second type of error would result if we entered the

Microsoft Excel:

Entering Data & Making Calculations 55●●●●●●●●●●●●

formula

=A1/A2and A2 contained the value ‘0’ – the formula istheoretically correct, but in

practice it results in a division by zero.Excel indicates errors by printing an error message in

the appropriatecell, allowing us to go back and investigate what went wrong. All in all,Excel

knows eight different types of errors:·

#DIV/0! Your formula may be fine, but one denominator

turnsout to be zero, leading to a ‘division by zero’ error. You maywant to check whether your formula

and all cell references arecorrect, and whether any cells that you refer to are empty.·

#N/A. This error occurs only in connection with the incorrect useof lookup-functions.

Lookup-functions are not discussed heresince they are an advanced concept.·

#NAME? Excel does not recognize the name of a formula or cellthat you used. Entering

=SIM(A1:A200)instead of =SUM(A1:A200)will get you this error. You will

need to returnto the cell and check all function and cell names that you used.·

#NULL! This error is rather uncommon and occurs only inresponse to advanced types

of cell references.·

#NUM! You have entered an invalid number, e.g. a number thatis too large.

·

#REF! This error indicates an invalid cell reference. It occurs e.g.when you replace one cell with

another cell, when the originalcell was used in a formula. The invalid reference has

beenremoved from your formula; you will need to edit it.·

#VALUE! Generally

happens when the information that youentered does not match the requirements, e.g. when you

enter textwhere a number is expected.=53+"Hello?"would result in suchan error.·

######## This is not actually an error; the formula you entered isfine. Instead, the cell is too small to

display its output. For example: if the result of your formula is 187,355,202,937,928.98, but

the cell only has room for eight digits, Excel will return thiserror. Increasing the width of the cell

will take care of the problem.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

3 3..

F F OORR M M A AT T T

T I I N N G G Y Y

OOU U RR S S

P P RRE E A ADDS S H H E

E E E T T This chapter discusses differentformatting options for cells andworksheets.

Over time, worksheets can become very complex, but that does notnecessarily imply that they

need to become cluttered or hard tounderstand. The present chapter discusses how you can format

your worksheet. You can use these functions to make your worksheets easier to grasp and navigate,

e.g. by formatting numbers, highlightingimportant cells and using borders and white space

to delineate differentdata series.First, we will discuss how you can select the cells to which

changesshould be applied. We will then discover how it is possible to format thecontent of

cells, the appearance of cells and the appearance of entireworksheets.Selecting cells

To select a single cell, click on it so that it is surrounded by a thick black border:Selecting a coherent block

of cells works like selecting text inPowerPoint or Word:1)Move your mouse pointer

to the top left cell of the block that youwant to highlight.2)Press the left mouse button and keep it

pressed while…3)you move the mouse pointer to the lower right cell of the block.Alternativ

ely, you can click on the top left cell, then press and hold thes

button while clicking on the lower right cell.Finally, to select several unrelated cells:1)

Click on the first cell so that it is surrounded by a thick black

58 Introduction to


border.2)Press and holdcwhile you click on the next cell

that you wantto select. This cell will now be surrounded by a light black border, while all previously

selected cells will be lightly shaded.3)Repeat the second step until you have selected all

desired cells.There are shortcuts that allow you to select entire rows, columns or eventhe

entire worksheet:·

To select an entire row or column, click on the row or columnheading.

·

To select an entire worksheet, click on the upper left corner of the worksheet area (the area to the

left of the first column header and above the first row header):Formatting cells

Changing the content typeExcel allows you to format cells to fit any sort of content, such as

dates,currency values, fractions, etc. It will try to do so automatically whenyou enter the information,

but in some cases, you may want to adjust thecontent type manually. You can do so by selecting one of

the shortcutson the formatting bar:

Microsoft Excel: Formatti

ng Your Spreadsheet 59●●●●●●●●●●●●

These shortcuts allow you to have your

number formatted as a currencyvalue13

or as a percentage. You can also switch digit grouping

on.Commas will then separate groups of three digits: 1475346 will become1,475,346. Finally, you

can increase or decrease the amount of visibledecimal places.14

c+

1‘Format’„

‘Cells…’More options are available in the ‘Format’, ‘Cells’ dialogue

under the‘Number’ heading:There are nine different categories that

you can choose from:·

General numbers. Allows you to specify the amount of

visibledecimal places, how negative numbers should be formatted andwhether digit grouping

should be applied.·

Currency values. Allows you to specify the amount of visibledecimal

places, how negative numbers should be formatted andwhich currency symbol should

be used. Numbers will be alignedat the decimal point.·

Currency values (accounting style). Similar

to the ‘currency’type, except that the currency symbols will also be aligned. It isnot possible

to change the formatting of negative numbers.·

Dates. Allows you to specify how the date

should be formatted.·

Time values. Allows specification of the time format.·

Percentages. Allows you to choose the amount of decimal places.13

The currency depends on your

PC’s regional settings.14

If necessary, Excel will round the number automatically.

60


·

Fractions. Allows you to

specify constraints for the fractions, e.g.‘only single-digit fractions’, or ‘only quarters’.·

Numbers in scientific notation. Shorthand for writing extremelylarge or small

numbers as multiples of 10 to a power, e.g.27

10563.1´

would equal1,563,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000Because Excel lacks the ability to write powers properly, it willwrite

1.563E+27 instead.·

Text. Usually, Excel will automatically recognize when you arewriting

text. This setting is useful if there are ambiguities, e.g.when you want to write an equal sign

without it being interpretedas a formula by Excel.Besides these nine categories, there are a number of

special-purposecategories available. If all else fails, you can design your own category.Finally

, you can format cells as ‘general’, i.e. leaving them without anyformatting whatsoever.

Formatting the cell content The formatting toolbar offers a number of choices regarding the

letteringof your cells.c + s +F– Font This changes the typeface of

your text. There is usually a broadassortment of typefaces available, but the most common ones

areArial is selected by default as it provides good readability for numericaldata. Excel will

automatically adjust the cell height for you when youchoose another font whose letters

are higher than Arial’s. However, thecell width will not be adjusted, so if you select a font

with wider characters, less information will be visible inside each cell. See thesection on increasing the

cell size (p. 63) for tips on correcting this problem.c + s +P– Font size

This changes the size of your text. The default size is 10 pt. Once again,

Microsoft Excel:

Formatting Your Spreadsheet 61●●●●●●●●●●●●

Excel will automatically

adjust the height of all affected cells, but it willleave their width unchanged. If you increase the

font size, lessinformation will be visible in each cell, see the section on increasing thecell size (p.

63) for tips on correcting this problem.Bold

c +BItalics

c +

IUnderline

c +U– Font styleThis changes the appearance

of your text. You can set your text inboldfaceanditalics

, or you can underline your words. By convention,underlining is no longer used to highlight text;

instead, text is set in boldface or italics. Underlining is now used to indicate Internet linksinstead.Left Center Right

– Paragraph alignment Allows you to choose whether your text is aligned to the left or

rightmargin of the placeholder, or whether it is centered.IncreaseindentDecreaseindent– Indentation

The ‘decrease indent’ and ‘increase indent’ buttons allow you to adjustthe

indentation of text.Clicking on the left part of the button will change the color of your text to the color indicatedon the button.If you wish

to use another color,click on the right part of the button.– Font color Finally, you can also change the color of the text,

e.g. to indicate animportant word. To do so, click on the ‘font color’ button. This willchange the

color of your text to whatever color is indicated on the button. (It is indicated in the bar below the

‘A’; in our case, it is black.)If you do not want your text to appear in that particular color, you canclick on

the right part of the button to expand the color menu.Recycling your work

You can apply any changes you are making to as many cells as you like.But you can also recycle your

formatting at a later stage, e.g. when youhave added new columns or rows and want to transplant the

formattingfrom existing cells. To do so,1.select a cell that is formatted to your liking and …


2.press the ‘format painter’ button on the standard toolbar. At this,your mouse

pointer will change shape .Press this button to copy theformatting of one cell to other cells.3.

You can now select any cells to which you want to apply thesame formatting.Before: After:The borders menu.

Formatting the cell – BordersThe borders menu allows you to quickly adjust the borders of cells.

First,select the cells that you want to affect. Then expand the borders menu byclicking on

the right part of the button to see the menu below.Each of these buttons will make a number of

borders visible or invisible.E.g. if you highlight a cluster of cells and click on the top left button,you will

get a border around the cluster, but no internal borders betweencells.c+

1‘Format’„

‘Cells…’Advanced border formatting options can be

found in the ‘Format’,‘Cells’ dialogue, under the ‘Borders’ heading.When adjusting borders, first

select the line style (thick, thin, dashed,double, etc.) and the line color. You can then opt for

one of the threequick selection buttons, which affects a number of borderssimultan

eously. Alternatively, you can apply individual borders byclicking on any of the eight

border toggles. These will switch thecorresponding borders on and off.

Microsof

t Excel: Formatting Your Spreadsheet 63●●●●●●●●●●●●

Top LeftBottom RightIf you are formatting a block of cells, then the outside border toggleswill

affect only the cells on the perimeter of the block. E.g. the ‘bottom border’ button will toggle the

bottom border for all cells in the bottomrow. If you are working on a single cell instead, or on

several non-contiguous cells, then the buttons will simply toggle the top, bottom, leftand right

borders.The inside border buttons are only available when you are working on a block of cells. They will

switch borders between rows and columns onand off.BetweenrowsBetweencolumnsFinally, the diagonal

strikethrough buttons will provide you with theappropriate strikethroughs inside cells.

Diagonal strikethrough– Background color You can set the background color of any cell by using the

‘backgroundcolor’ button.– Increasing the cell sizeFrequently, you will enter information that

does not ‘fit’ inside a singlecell, i.e. the information cannot be displayed completely. If

there isnothing in the next cell, then Excel will simply write across the cell boundary:But if there is

something in the next cell, then you will only see part of the information:This problem can

be solved in two ways: you can make cells wider (or higher), but this will affect all cells in that

particular column (or row).Alternatively, you can merge the cell with its

neighboring cells.– Adjusting column width and row height There are several ways to

adjust the width of a column or the height of arow. You can do it manually by:1.

Moving your mouse pointer to the border between two column or row headers, so that it changes into a

two-pronged arrow , and…

64 Introduction to


2.pressing and holding the left mouse button while you resize

thecolumn or row to your liking.Once you release the mouse button, your changes

will be put into action.‘Format’„

‘Row’„

‘Height…’‘Format’„

‘Column’„

‘Width…’Alternatively, you can select ‘Format’, ‘Column’, ‘Width’ or ‘Format’,‘Row’, ‘Height’ from

the menu bar. You will then be asked to enter anumber between 0 and 255, which represents the

average amount of characters visible in each cell.15

However, there is a quicker way: move your

mouse pointer to the gap between two column or row headers and perform a double-click.

Thiswill automatically resize the column or row to fit the cell with the largestcontent.A

lternatively, you can select ‘Format’, ‘Column’, ‘AutoFit’ or ‘Format’,‘Row’,

‘AutoFit’ from the menu bar.‘Format’„

‘Row’„

‘AutoFit’‘Format’„

‘Column’„

‘AutoFit’– Merging cellsThe second option would be to merge two or more cells. This isadvantageous whenever you

want to make a cell wider, higher, or bothwithout affecting the other cells in its row or column.

To merge cells:1.select all the cells you want to merge and …Pressing this button will mergeall selected cells. It

will alsocenter their combined content.2.press the ‘merge and center’ button.You have just created a

family-sized cell! Two things should be noted:firstly, the content of the new cell will be centered. If you

prefer it to bealigned to the left or right margin, you will need to adjust the alignmentyours

elf. Secondly, and more importantly: the new cell will only keepthe value of the top left cell.

The content of all other cells will be lost!15

Be aware that this value is an average. After all, a ‘w’ is wider than an ‘i’. It is also presumed

that you are working withthe standard font and size, Arial 10 pt.

Microsoft Excel:

Formatting Your Spreadsheet 65●●●●●●●●●●●●

c+

1‘Format’„

‘Cells…’If you want to ‘unmerge’ this cell at any point in the future,1.

select the merged cell2.select ‘Format’, ‘Cells’ from the menu bar 3.

switch to the ‘Alignment’ category and4.unselect the ‘Merge cells’ option.‘Insert’„

‘Rows’‘Insert’„

‘Columns’Working with rows and columns

Inserting and deleting rows and columnsTo insert a new row or column, select ‘Insert’, ‘Rows’ or

‘Insert’,‘Columns’ from the menu bar. New rows will be added above thecurrently active cell,

while new columns will be inserted to the left of it.If you want to insert more than one row or column,

highlight as manyrows or columns as you need, and select the ‘Insert’, ‘Rows’ or ‘Columns’

option. Excel will insert as many new rows or columns asyou have currently selected.‘Format’

„

‘Row’„

‘Hide’‘Format’„

‘Column’„


‘Column’„

‘Unhide’‘Format’„

‘Row’„

‘Unhide’Hiding parts of your worksheet In some cases, you may want

to hide parts of your worksheet, e.g. tomake it easier to grasp. To do so, highlight the row(s) or

column(s) youwant to hide and select ‘Format’, ‘Row’, ‘Hide’ or ‘Format’, ‘Column’,‘Hide

’ respectively. Your rows or columns will still be there, they will just not be plainly visible. Hiding

parts of your worksheet will not affectany of the formulas. To make hidden columns visible again,

highlightthe last column before and the first column after the hidden part, thenselect ‘Format’,

‘Column’, ‘Unhide’ from the menu bar. A similar procedure works for rows.Two

things should be noted: firstly, it is not possible to hide individualcells; only entire rows and columns

can be hidden. Secondly, hiding parts of your worksheet will not protect your data from prying

eyes.There are better ways to secure your work, butan experienced user caneasily circumvent all of

Excel’s security measures. If you haveconfidential data, you should rely on professional

encryption tools.Working with sheetsLabeling sheetsEspecially when you are working with more than

three sheets, it can behard to keep track of them all. Fortunately, you can easily give themmore

meaningful names than ‘Sheet7’. To label a sheet,

66 Introduc


1.

double-click on its sheet tab, …2.enter the new name and …3.press/

.Copying and moving worksheetsTo copy or move a sheet, right-click on its

tab and select ‘move or copy’from the menu that pops up.By default, Excel assumes that you want to

move or copy the sheetwithin the same workbook. If you want to transfer a sheet to another

workbook, you need to open this workbook before moving or copyingthe sheet. You can then specify to

which workbook the sheet should besent and where it should be inserted. Finally, you can

choose whether you want to copy the sheet or move it. Note that there can be problems when you move or

copy a sheet toanother workbook. If formulas on the transferred sheet referred to any of the other

sheets in the original workbook, then this information will not be included in the process. If you

open the new workbook, theseformulas will not work unless you open the original document too.‘Insert’

„

‘Worksheet’Inserting and deleting worksheetsTo insert a new worksheet, select ‘Insert’,

‘Worksheet’ from the menu

Microsoft Excel: Formatting Your

Spreadsheet 67●●●●●●●●●●●●

bar. To delete a worksheet, right-click on its tab and select ‘delete’ fromthe

menu that appears. Any formulas that refer to cells on the deletedworkshe

et will cease to function.‘Format’„

‘Sheet’„


‘Sheet’„

‘Unhide…’Hiding a complete worksheet By selecting ‘Format’, ‘Sheet’, ‘Hide’ from the menu

bar, you can hidean entire worksheet from view. To let it reappear again, click on‘Format’,

‘Sheet’, ‘Unhide’ from the menu bar and then select whichsheet you would like to make visible

again. We should warn you thathiding worksheets will not protect sensitive data. Although

Excelcontains a number of security features that you could use,anexperienced user can easily

circumvent all of them. Rely on professionalencryption tools if you need to protect

confidential data.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

44..

A AN N A ALLY Y

Z Z I I N N G G &&DD

I I S S P P LL A AY Y I I N N G G

DDA AT T A AThis chapter introduces

Excel’sdata analysis tool and explainshow you can produce graphswith Excel.This chapter concludes our coverage of

Microsoft Excel by discussingtwo advanced topics. In the first part, we briefly discuss

Excel’s dataanalysis tools. In the second part we learn how to present datagraphically

by creating charts.The data analysis toolsExcel includes a set of tools that enables you to analyze data in

a varietyof ways. For instance, it enables you to perform ANOVAs,z

- andt -tests,and creates histograms and correlation tables for you.

Unfortunately, thisuseful tool is not automatically available in Excel; you need to install itfirst.

Installing the toolsThe data analysis tools are not automatically installed in

Excel. Instead,they are an add-on, a component that needs to be activated separately.To

find out whether you can use the data analysis tools, click on ‘Tools’in the menu bar. If you can find an

option called ‘Data analysis’, then theappropriate component has already been activated and

you canimmediately start with your analysis. If no ‘Data analysis’ option islisted, then you need to

activate the component manually.‘Tools’„

‘Add-ins…’1.

Select ‘Tools’, ‘Add-ins’ from the menu bar.2.Select ‘Analysis Toolpak’ (not

‘Analysis Toolpak VBA’) in thewindow that appears. While you are there, you may want toactivate

the ‘Solver’ add-in, too. It will be used later in your Quantitative Methods course.After a

few moments, the data analysis tools will be available.

70 Introduction to


Using the data analysis toolsThe description of each individual data

analysis tool and its functiongoes beyond the scope of this introduction. A significant

number of these tools will be covered in detail during your first year-QM courses.Therefo

re, we limit ourselves to a brief discussion of their commonfeatures.The data analysis tools,

as most other features of Excel, usually expectyour data to be arranged in columns, i.e. each column

represents adifferent variable, while each row represents an individual observation.E.g.

in the table below, several houses have been categorized accordingto their sales price,

size, age, and other variables.‘Tools’„

‘Data analysis…’When you want to analyze data using the data

analysis tools, you do notneed to select the data beforehand. Instead, you can immediately

launchthe toolset by selecting ‘Tools’, ‘Data analysis’ from the menu bar.You can

then choose from an assortment of analysis tools. In the nextstep, you will need to enter

information that is specific to the tool of your choice. Common to all tools are the

following options:– Input optionsHere, you select which part of your data needs to be analyzed.

You caneither enter the cell reference directly, or you can select the cellsmanually by1.

clicking on the ‘selection’ button, …2.selecting the cells with your mouse and …3.

confirming your choice by clicking on the ‘transfer reference’

General Topics:


button.1. 2. 3.It is recommended that you select

the column heading (‘size’ in our example), too. Excel will use this label in its output: if you are

doingseveral analyses, you won’t have to guess which is which. If you selectthe column label, be

sure to also select the ‘labels’ option – otherwise,Excel will not know how to deal with the text.

– Output optionsAlso common to all analysis tools is the output options dialogue. Here,you can

specify where the results should be stored. There are threeoptions:·

Output range. This option saves the results to a range of cells onany existing worksheet. You

only need to select the top left cell.Be aware that the output will usually consume several

rows below and several columns to the right of that cell. Any data inthese cells will be overwritten, so

it is crucial that you select acell that is not next to any important data.·

New worksheet ply. This will

create a new worksheet and savethe results there. If you want to, you can provide a label

for thenew worksheet.·

New workbook. This will create a new Excel document and savethe data

there.The specific options of the individual tools will be among the subjects of your Quantitative

Methods classes.Creating chartsLet’s assume that you have prepared a ‘revenues and costs’

calculationand you would like to communicate your results. A chart of the figureswould be the optimal tool

for this purpose, as charts are quickly andeasily understood by everyone.


The quick and dirty method You can create a chart very quickly using these two steps:1.

Select the two data series (including their labels or headings)2.Press-

.0 €2,000 €4,000 €6,000 €8,000 €10,000 €12,000 €14,000 €1 2 3 4 56 7 8 9 10 1 1 1 2RevenuesCosts

The result is not too bad for such a small effort. There are, however, anumber of drawbacks to

this procedure. Most notably: Excel will alwayscreate a bar graph, which is not appropriate in a

number of situations. Inour example, there is a better alternative available…

When to use which graphDifferent types of information call for different types of graphs. Thequestion

which graph to use in which situation will be discussed duringyour Quantitative Methods

classes. Therefore, we only provide a shortoverview of the most important types of charts:·

Bar chartsare mainly used to allow a comparison of amountsacross a range of categories. An

example would be a comparisonof the scores of two students in several subjects.

General

Topics: Getting Hooked Up 73●●●●●●●●●●●●

·

Line charts

are a good way to display developments over time.Such a graph would have been more appropriate for

our exampleabove, since we want to investigate thedevelopment

of revenuesand costsover the last year .·

Pie charts show how many

percent each category contributes to atotal, e.g. which part of the monthly costs stems

from wages,advertising expenditure, etc.·

Scatter plots allow us to plot observations for

two separatevariables. E.g. we could plot countries according to their GDP per capita and their

social security expenditures.In the following, we will create a more appropriate line graph for our

revenue and cost data.Using the chart wizard Once again, we start out by selecting the

data series that we want to plot.Remember to include the labels for both data series in your selection.

This button launches the chartwizard.We then call up the chart wizard by clicking on the appropriate icon. Thechart

wizard allows us to create and configure a chart in four steps. Inthe first step, we select which type of

graph we wish to use.For each type of chart, there are several subtypes. Excel provides a brief explanation of

the purpose of the currently selected type below theselection window. You can also call up

a preview to see how your datawould be displayed using the selected chart type. Once you are done,


clicking ‘next’ will take you to the second step.From this step onward, Excel will automatically

provide you with athumbnail preview so that you have an idea what the final chart will look like. In the

second step, you have the opportunity to make minor adjustments to your chart. First of all, Excel

assumes that your data isarranged by columns, as is indeed the case in our example. If your datais

arranged by rows, then you can make the appropriate adjustment now:Secondly, and more

importantly, you can also adjust the labeling of your graph. To do so, switch from the ‘data range’ to

the ‘series’ category.Here, you can specify the label for each individual series, as well ascategory

headings that will be used to label thex-axis.Before we started the wizard, we

selected not only the actual data series, but also its label. Excel has recognized the top row as the

heading andhas already labeled the series for us: in the series list you can see that both data series are recorded

with the appropriate names. If necessary,you can change these labels be entering a

different name in the ‘name’ box.Before we continue with step 3, we also add category

labels. To do so,1.click on the ‘selection’ button in the ‘Category (X)

axis labels’ box…2.select the row headings from our original table, and …3.

confirm your choice by clicking on the ‘transfer reference’ button.Excel will then add

the appropriate labels to thex-axis. Our graph nowlooks roughly like this:


Next on our agenda: adding titles to our graph and to the axes.Meticulous labeling generally

improves the quality of a graph. In our case, we might want to label the graph ‘Revenues &

Costs 2001’, withthe currency unit (‘Euro’) added to they

-axis.A brief overview of the other options:·

In most cases, you will need both axes. Still, you have the

optionof removing one or both of them by unselecting them in the‘axes’ menu. Furthermore,

you can also specify how the labelsfor thex-axis should be displayed. It is usually best to

go with the‘automatic’ setting.·

In the ‘gridlines’ category, you can switch

gridlines for both axeson and off. ‘Major’ gridlines are gridlines spaced at broadintervals.

‘Minor’ gridlines are only useful when your audienceneeds to be able to track down the

value for each observationrather precisely.·

The next category allows you to switch the legend on

and off,and it also allows you to specify where exactly it should belocated in the graph.·

The ‘data labels’ category allows you to add data labels to alllines. These labels are used when it is

important for your audience to know the exact values for each observation. Usingthese

labels tends to clutter your graph, so use them sparingly.·

Finally, adding a ‘data table’ enables you to

include the exact

76 Introduction to


values for each series and each observation in a table below thegraph.This

concludes the third step. The only remaining task is to specify thelocation of our graph.If you

wish to print the graph on one page together with your calculations, you should include it as an

object in the appropriate sheet.However, if you plan to transfer the graph to another document, e.g.

to aWord file, it will be of better quality if you place it on its own sheet for now.Once you click ‘finish’,

the chart will be created to your specifications:0 €2,000 €4,000 €6,000 €8,000 €10,000 €12,000 €14,000 €J a n u a r y F e b r u a r y M a r c h A p r i l M a y J u n e J u l y A u g u s t S e p t e m b e r O c t o b e r N o v e m b e r D e c e m b e rRevenuesCosts

If you find at a later point that you need to adjust any of the choicesmade so far, simply right-click on

any open space in the graph (i.e. noton the labels, lines, or axes). The menu that appears allows you to go back

to any of the four steps…Furthermore, you can edit the graph by double-clicking on any of the


elements. E.g. double-clicking on one of the data series will allow you tospecify its style and color.

Similarly, clicking on the chart backgroundallows you to adjust its color and border. Finally,

you can also alter theappearance of the gridlines and axes in a variety of ways. The range of

options is vast and goes beyond the scope of this introduction.Transferring a graph to

another document To copy a graph to another document, e.g. for inclusion in a

writingassignment written in Word, simply click on the white area thatsurrounds the actual chart.

(Be careful not to click on the axes, labels or legend.) If you push the ‘copy’ button, you will note that the

entire chartwill be surrounded by a dashed border. You will be able to insert thegraph into other documents

as long as this border is there.‘Edit’„

‘Paste special…’When you insert the graph into Word or

PowerPoint, you may want todo so by selecting ‘Edit’, ‘Paste special’ from the menu bar, instead of

simply clicking on the ‘paste’ button. This will allow you to specifyhow

the chart should be inserted. Usually, the choice is between the options‘Microsoft Excel Chart

Object’, ‘Picture’ and a couple of others.Choosing ‘Microsoft Excel Chart Object’ allows

you to edit the graphlater on, even when you do not have the original Excel documentanymore. At the same

time, opting for ‘Microsoft Excel Chart Object’will greatly increase the size of your Word or

PowerPoint file becauseall data and all options need to be saved together with the chart. If youwant to keep

the file size as small as possible, go for the ‘picture’ option.There will be no qualitative

difference between the two ways of pastingthe chart.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●


M MI I C C

RROO

S S OOF

F T T P P

OOW

W E E

RRP P

OOI I

N N T T ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

11..I I N N T T R

ROODDU U C C T T I I OON N

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation graphics program. You can use itto prepare visual

aids and handouts for your presentations. If you areusing a beamer, you will even be

able to add movies, sounds andanimations to your presentation. In the following, we will acquaint

you with the program and offer you astep-by-step guide to preparing presentations.Starting PowerPoint

You can start PowerPoint by double-clicking on the PowerPoint icon onyour desktop. If there

is no such icon, you can start the program byclicking on ‘Programs’ and then ‘Microsoft PowerPoint’ in

the Startmenu. PowerPoint will start as well if you double-click on anyPowerPoint document.

Finally, you can also use the ‘new officedocument’ and ‘open office document tools’.‘Start’

„

‘Programs’„

‘Microsoft PowerPoint’Create newOffice docs.Open existingOffice docs.

Unless you are opening an existing PowerPoint document, you will be presented with a

range of choices that are meant to get you startedquickly. For now, we presume that you want to

create a new presentation. In that case, you have to choose between three options:The AutoContent

Wizard will provide you with a structured outline for your presentation. Say you want to

present a marketing strategy for your marketing course, then PowerPoint would suggest a

structure like this:·

Describe the market·

Introduce the product·

Provide an overview of the competition·

Position the product·

Discuss the communication strategy·

Comment on logistical aspects·

Provide a way to measure success·

Outline a scheduleThe AutoContent Wizard is an

extremely useful feature if you are notentirely certain how to structure your presentation.

But there is a major caveat: there are almost no AutoContent Wizards for students. In mostcases, you

will have to do it on your own.Template wizards do not help you with the actual content of your

presentation, but they provide pre-designed slides for your presentation.

82 Introduc


These templates include all the settings for

background patters, color schemes and fonts, so that you do not have to worry about the look of your

presentation anymore. The advantage is that you can immediatelystart working on the content.Howeve

r, some people are easily distracted by the design elements onthe slides. For these people, it may

be best to start with a blank presentation. You can always go back and add a design template later.In

the following, we will start off with a blank presentation. The mainreason is expressed by the mantra

‘form follows function’. A presentation is always about the content, so you should focus first

andforemost on what you want to say.After you have selected ‘blank presentation’ from the

opening screen,you will need to choose how your first slide should be structured.Choose your slide structure…

You will usually start your presentation with a title slide. To do so,double-click

on the top left option.Finding your way in PowerPoint At this point, you will be confronted with

the main screen of PowerPoint.

Microsoft PowerPoint:

Introduction 83●●●●●●●●●●●●

Besides the obligatory menu bar, toolbars and status bar, you will

notethat the screen has been divided into three distinct areas.Outline pane

Used to design the broadstructure of a presentation.To the left, we have theoutline pane. When you are creating a new

presentation, you will usually turn to the outline pane first. It is used to prepare the general

structure of your presentation.Slide previewArea where you edit your slides.The large area to the left is the

slide preview. This is where you willrefine your presentation by adding text,

images and graphs.Notes paneArea where you jot down notesfor individual slides.

Finally, below the slide preview is thenotes pane. Here you can leaveremarks regarding each

individual slide. These notes will not show up onthe screen during your presentation, but they will be

included in thehandouts that PowerPoint can generate for you.Before you start…

Be aware that your visualaidsare just that, a support for your presentation. You should first

and foremost focus on what you want tosay, not what is on the screen or on the overhead projector. A

good wayto obtain this focus by completing a short exercise before you startworking on your slides: find

a place where you are alone and try to holdyour speech without preparing or using any notes.

(If you are presentinga paper or essay you have written, put it away.) Even though the

exercisemay be awkward and your impromptu speech may be rather short, it is a


helpful experience.Once you are done, collect all the points that you mentioned during your test

run. Now, try to structure your points logically, from the problem tothe solution, from the broad to the

detailed, etc.At this point (or even during your speech), you may notice that youforgot to mention one

thing or another. Be sure to include them in your structure, but highlight them with a colored marker

– these are topicsthat you may tend to forget again and you will have to pay specialattention

to them when rehearsing your presentation later.Once you have a broad structure, you are ready to

prepare your slides.We will do so in the following order:1.

Transfer your structure to PowerPoint2.Flesh out each individual slide3.

Add notes when necessary4.Check the order of your slides5.Add outlines and summaries6.

Add a layout and additional effectsThe first two steps are the biggest chunk of work, and we will

focus onthe in the following chapter. The remaining four tasks are concernedwith checking and

refining your presentation, and are discussed in thethird chapter of this section.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

22..B B

U U I I LLDDI I N N G G Y Y

OOU U RR V V

I I S S U U A ALL A A

I I DDS S This chapter discusses how youcan create transparencies inPowerPoint,

moving from a broad outline to a completeseries of slides.In the process of creating slides for a presentation,

creating a structureand populating your slides with text and illustrations is the largest part of the

work. Below, we will discuss how you can quickly create a largenumber of slides by transferring

your outline to PowerPoint. We willthen focus on giving these slides substance by adding text,

images,tables and charts.Transferring your structure to PowerPoint Entering your outline in PowerPoint

does not take too much time.Simply click once on the outline pane and you can start typing.

Initially,PowerPoint will interpret your input as titles for each slide. Every timeyou press

/, PowerPoint will generate a new slide for you. Thisway, you can easily create and label

a large number of slides withoutneeding to enter the actual content.However, if you have a

large number of slides, entering at least a fewkeywords regarding their content may be

beneficial. To do so, press/andT

after entering the title of a slide. PressingTmovesyou to a lower level: everything that

you enter now will show up askeywords on the slide. Once you are done entering the last keyword, press

/and thens + T. You will then be able to enter aslide title again.

Your outline might look likethis…The slide selector isdirectly below thescroll bar.Fleshing out the individual slides

Once you have prepared a broad outline, you will want to enter moredetailed text on each

slide. To do so, we move to the slide preview. Youcan use the scroll bars to select the slide that you want to

work on, or you can use the slide selector to browse through the slides one by one.On slides,

everything needs to be in placeholders. The advantage of placeholders is that they can be moved

around or resized easily to fityour needs. Almost all slides have pre-positioned placeholders,

whichyou can recognize by their dashed border and the hint ‘click to add text’or

‘click to add title’.Entering text To enter text, click once inside the border of the

placeholder of your choice. Once a placeholder contains text (or anything else), its border

becomes invisible. If you want to edit the text inside a placeholder,simply click once

on the text itself.

86 Introduction to


When entering text, remember that your slides are only meant as asupport for

your actual presentation. That implies that you should keepyour text short and to the point. The best

way to do this is to restrictyourself to keywords only. You do not want your audience to

spendsignificant time reading elaborate sentences on the screen while theyshould be listening to you.

Also, for reasons of visibility, you shouldrestrict yourself to 30 words or (preferably) less

per slide, and make surethat the text is big enough. Font sizes around 30 pt. are best. Only if youare

really desperate can you go down to 24 pt. Everything below 24 pt. isa big no-no.Formatting text

To format your text, you can use the formatting toolbar.You have the

following options:c + s +F– Font This changes the typeface of

your text. There is usually a broadassortment of typefaces available, but the most

common ones arec + s +F– Font sizeThis changes the size of your

text. For reasons of visibility, choose sizesaround 30 pt. You should go no lower than 24

pt.Unlike in Word, it is probably best if not to use this option. To maintaina

uniform look throughout your slides, PowerPoint contains two optionsthat apply

standardized changes to your text. Both can be found on theformatting toolbar.

– Adjusting the font sizeThe first set of buttons allows you to change the size of your text. Eachtime

you click the ‘increase font size’ or ‘decrease font size’ buttons,PowerPoint adjusts the

size of your text by a degree that will be visibleon the screen.c + s +>

Increase the font size.

Microsoft PowerPoint:

Building Your Visual Aids 87●●●●●●●●●●●●

c + s +<

Decrease the font size.– Promoting and demoting text The second set of buttons adjusts the level

of the text. In your lists, someentries may be broad categories and some may be individual items

that belong to a category, as in our example below:·

Economics Propedeuseo

Block 1§Organization & Marketing§Quantitative Methods 1o

Block 2§Competition & Government Policy§Quantitative Methods 2Here,

‘Economics Propedeuse’ is the broadest category, and it containssubcategories such as ‘block 1’. These

subcategories in turn includeindividual entries, which are even narrower in scope.We say

that ‘Economics Propedeuse’ is on the highest level, and theother categories are on lower levels.

When you enter your list, you start by typing·

Economics Propedeuse·

Block 1Demote

At this point, you will have to demote ‘block 1’ to a lower level byclicking the ‘demote’

button, or pressingT.·

Economics Propedeuseo

Block 1PromoteIn PowerPoint, this will indent the line you are currently in. It will alsodecrease the

font size and change the style of the bullet to indicate aconceptual difference. To reverse the

process, you can ‘promote’ entriesto higher levels by using the ‘promote’ button or pressing

s + T.Bold

c +BItalics

c +

IUnderline

c +UShadow– Font styleThis changes the appearance

of your text. You can set your text inboldfaceor italics

, and you can underline your words or add asshhaaddooww.By convention, underlining is

no longer used to highlight text; instead,text is set in boldface or italics. Underlining is

now used to indicateInternet links instead. The shadow will be too weak to create adistinction

between more and less important text, but you can use it as anadded effect for words that stand alone.Left Center Right

c +Lc +R– Paragraph alignment

Allows you to choose whether your text is aligned to the left or rightmargin of the placeholder,

or whether it is centered.

88 Introduction to


– List typeFinally, most of the text on slides is in the form of a list.

Here you canchoose whether it is an ordered or unordered list. To illustrate:Ordered list.Unordered list.

An ordered list: An unordered list:1.First item2.Second item·

One item·

Another item– Adjusting the color Finally, you can also change the color of the text, e.g. to indicate

animportant word. To do so, click on the ‘font color’ button which is (for no reason at all) not located

on the formatting but on the drawingtoolbar. This will change the color of your text to

whatever color isindicated on the button. (It is indicated in the bar below the ‘A’; in our case, it is black.)

Clicking on the left part of the button will change the color of your text to the color indicatedon the button.If you wish to use another color,click on the

right part of the button.If you do not want your text to be that particular color, you can click onthe right part

of the button to expand the color menu.The color menu always contains eight colors, all of which serve a

particular function.1.Background2.Text and lines3.Shadows4.Title text5.Fills6.

Accent7.Accent and hyperlink 8.Accent and followed hyperlink Depending on

the design template’s color scheme, the colors maychange, but their function will not. E.g.

the second color will always bethe standard color for text. To highlight text, use the ‘accent’ color

(no.six).We realize that (depending on your taste preferences), some of thesecolors may

cause nausea. In that case, feel free to click on ‘more fontcolors’ and take your pick from the palette

that pops up. However,sticking with the eight colors above has one advantage: if you change

toanother design template later on, your colors will be adjustedautomatically to the new color scheme.

Color that you choose from the‘more font colors’ palette will not be adjusted – you will have to

gothrough each slide manually to see if your colors conflict with the newdesign template.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Building

Your Visual Aids 89●●●●●●●●●●●●

The effect your changes will have…

There are two possible scenarios. You may want to change text that youhave already typed, or you

may alter the attributes of text you are aboutto type.– Editing text When you want to change the

attributes of text that you already typed,you need to indicate which part of the text you want to affect.

You cando so by marking the text.1.Move your mouse pointer to the beginning of the text that

youwant to highlight.2.Press the left mouse button and keep it pressed while…3.

you move the mouse pointer to the end of the text.4.Make your changes.Using the mouse may

not always be the fastest way to select text. Thesection on selecting text on p. 90 details several

keyboard shortcuts thatcan greatly speed up the process.– Altering the attributes of text

you are about to typeIf you want to adjust the properties of text that you have not typed

yet,simply make the changeswithout highlighting anything and start typing.E.g. if

you know that the next word should be printed in italics, simply pressc +

I

or click on the italics-button and type the word. Tocontinue

typing normally, pressc +I

again.c +n

Removes all formatting.To remove formatting If you mistakenly italicized some text, you can

simply undo the damage by pressing the italics-button again. The same goes for all the formattingstyles

. There also is a shortcut to removeall formatting simultaneously:simply hold

cwhile pressingn.Cutting, copying, pasting

Just like in most Office programs, you can cut, copy and paste text andother objects. Before

you can cut or copy, you need to select theelements that you want to affect. The procedure

differs for selecting textand for selecting placeholders. Once you selected all

desired elements,

90 Introduction to


you can continue to cut and paste them normally. (See ch. 2 of

thegeneral section, ‘Common elements of Microsoft Office

programs’ for more details.)– Selecting text To select text using the mouse, follow

these three easy steps:1)Move your mouse pointer to the beginning of the text that

youwant to highlight.2)Press the left mouse button and keep it pressed while…3)

you move the mouse pointer to the end of the text.Instead of using the mouse, you can

also use the keyboard:1)Simply move the cursor to the beginning (or end) of the text.2)

Press and hold theskey while…3)… moving the cursor around

with the arrow keysu,d,l

andr.This allows you to highlight one character at a time. You can speed upthe

process by holdingsandcwhile using the arrow keys.

Thiswill highlight one word at a time.Some additional timesavers:·

Pressing

s + hor s + ehighlights everythingfrom your current position to the

beginning or end of the currentline.·

Pressingc + s + hor c + s + e

highlight everything from your current position to the top or bottom of the document.·

Pressing

s + Mor s + Whighlights larger portionsof text.·

Pressingc + s + u

or c + s + dhighlighteverything from your current position to the top or

bottom of the paragraph.Selecting placeholders1)Click on the first

placeholder. A border may appear around the placeholder. (This depends on its contents.)

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t PowerPoint: Building Your

Visual Aids 91●●●●●●●●●●●●

2)Press and holdswhile you click on the next

placeholder. It,too, may be surrounded by a border.3)Repeat the second step until you have

selected all desired placeholders.c +Z‘Edit’„

‘Undo’Undo changes.Undoing changesWhen you have done something really disastrous, e.g.

deleted all the texton one slide, you can always undo the changes one at a time by clickingthe

undo button. If you click on the right part of the undo button , youwill see a list of your last changes and

you can undo as many of them asyou like.If it turns out that the changes were indeed justified, you

can re-do them by clicking the ‘redo’ button. If you use the ‘redo’ button immediatelyafter pressing the

‘undo’ button, your changes will be restored. If your last action however was not to ‘undo’

something, then the ‘redo’ buttonwill be deactivated. Instead, you can use the keyboard

shortcut or theappropriate ‘Edit’ menu item to repeat your last action. This will

notwork in all circumstances.c +Y‘Edit’„

‘Redo’Redo

c +

Y‘Edit’„

‘Repeat’Repeat

c +M‘Insert’„

‘New Slide…’Insert additional slides.Adding additional slidesIf you need to insert additional slides at any

point, click on the ‘newslide’ button. You can then choose from an assortment of preformattedslid

es for simple text, two-sided arguments, tables, graphs etc.Choose your slide structure…


Adds a table of the dimensionsthat you specify.Add a table to your slideTo add a table to your slide, simply click on

the ‘add table’ button on thestandard toolbar and select the dimensions of your table from

the gridthat pops up:The table will then be placed on your slide. Tables are always

placedinside their own placeholder – it is not possible to add a table to a preexisting

text placeholder.When you are above a table border, your mouse pointer lookslike this to indicate that you canresize the table.

You can now add text to the individual cells. If the cells are too big or too small, you can resize them by

placing your mouse on top of any of the borders, so that it turns into a double line that is pulled by

twoopposing arrows . Press and hold the left mouse button and resize thetable to your liking.

To see the ‘tables and borders’toolbar, press this button.Whenever you are working on a table, the ‘tables and

borders’ toolbar will automatically pop up. You can also force it to appear by clicking

the‘tables and borders’ button on the standard toolbar.Below, we provide a quick overview of its features.

Press this button to draw a table.When drawing tables, your mouse pointer looks like a pen.– Drawing toolsInstead of creating a table

as described above, you can also use thedrawing tools. Click on the ‘draw table’ button and your

mouse pointwill turn into a pen . Now you can conveniently draw cells and entiretables. When you are

done, you need to turn the drawing feature off byclicking on the ‘draw table’ button a second time.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Building

Your Visual Aids 93●●●●●●●●●●●●

If you made mistakes when drawing or if

your table has a fewsuperfluous cells, you can take care of them by using the eraser. Click onthe ‘eraser’

button to switch the feature on or off. When the tool isactivated, your mouse pointer will look like an

eraser and will performthe same function: it will remove unnecessary lines and cells

from your tables.Erase cells and borders using thistool.When erasing, your mouse pointer will look like this.Sets the line style.Sets

the border thickness.Sets the border color.– Border attributesYou can adjust three different types of border

attributes: their style,thickness and color. Among the border styles you can select to have no

border, a straight line, or a dashed line. The thickness determines how pronounced the border will

appear on the screen. Common values are 1 pt., 2 ½ pt. and 3 ¼ pt. Finally, the border color

button presents you withthe obvious choice. Once again, you can choose between colors from

thestandardized color scheme or from the ‘more colors’ palette.The borders menu.– Borders menuThe borders menu allows

you to quickly adjust the borders of a wholearray of cells or even of the entire table. To apply these

settings, youneed to select the cells that you want to affect. You can then expand the borders menu

by click on the right part of the button :Each of these buttons will make a number of borders visible

or invisible.E.g. if you highlight your entire table and click on the top left button,you will get a border

around your table, but no internal borders betweenyour cells.This button allows you to pick a

background color for your cells.– Background color You can set the background color of any cell by using the

‘backgroundcolor’ button. As always, you can take your pick from the standardizedcolor scheme or

you can opt for any other color.Quick access to the table menu.– Table menuThe table menu gives you access to a

number of maintenance functionsfor your table: you can add columns and rows and

quickly select parts of your table or even the entire table.

94 Introduction to


Merge as many cells as you likeusing this button.This button lets you split a cellinto a number

of rows and/or columns.– Merge & split cellsIn some cases, you may want to combine a number of cells

into onelarger cell. You can do so by highlighting these cells and then clickingon the ‘merge

cells’ button. Obviously, this button will only work if youhave selected more than one cell. The opposite is

also possible: you cansplit a cell into as many rows and columns as you want, simply byclicking on

the ‘split cell’ button. This button is not available when youhave selected more than one cell.Top Center Bottom

– Vertical alignment The vertical alignment determines whether your text is located at

the top,the center or the bottom of each cell.Adding other elements to your slides

You can also freely insert content from other applications. You may e.g.want to add

a graph from Excel. To do so, simply cut or copy the graphin Excel and paste it into your slide. The

object will automatically be placed inside its own placeholder, so that you can move it around

andresize it.Alternatively, you can add pictures, movies, sounds and other objects

byclicking on ‘Insert’ on the menu bar, and then selecting among the‘Picture’, ‘Movies and

sounds’ and ‘Object’ options. You can insert pictures from files, from a scanner or from

a digital camera, and youmay want to check out PowerPoint’sClipArt

library. Finally, you caninsert just about any object that you can create using other software.‘Insert’„

‘Picture’‘Insert’„

‘Movies and Sounds’‘Insert’„

‘Object…’ClipArtA picture or drawing insertedinto text

documents for illustration purposes.Moving and resizing individual placeholders

Once you placed your content on the slide, you may want to refine thelayout by moving the

individual placeholders around or by expanding or shrinking some of the items.The border of a text placeholder.Your

mouse pointer will look like this.To move tables and text placeholders, click inside them once to maketheir

border visible. If you place your mouse pointer on top of the border, it will sport a four-way arrow:

you can now move the objectaround by pressing and holding the left mouse button while moving

themouse. Moving objects other than text boxes or tables is even easier:your mouse pointer

only needs to be on top of the object, you do nothave to worry about its border.

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t PowerPoint: Building Your

Visual Aids 95●●●●●●●●●●●●

To resize objects, use the whitesquares at the corners and in themiddle of their border.When

resizing objects, your mouse pointer will look like atwo-pronged arrow.Resizing objects works in a similar way. If you are working

with a text placeholder or a table, you need to make its border visible by clicking onthe text or

table once. Notice that there are white squares at each of thefour corners and in the middle of

each border. When you place your mouse pointer on top of any of these squares, it will turn into a two-

pronged arrow, indicating that you can now make the object larger or smaller. Simply press the left

mouse button and keep it pressed whileyou move the object’s border.Example:

Move your mouse pointer to one of the squares.Press the left mouse button and keep it pressedwhile you relocate the border.Release the mouse buttonwhen

the object has thedesired dimensions.Note that each square only allows you to move the border(s) to

which itis attached. E.g. the square in the middle of the top border will allow youto move the top

border up and down (see above), while the square in thelower right corner allows you to

simultaneously move the borders to theright and below the object. The mouse pointer

will indicate in whichdirections you can move.To resize objects other than text boxes and tables, you

will need to click on them once. At this point, the appropriate white squares

will appear next to the object.Adding arrows, geometric shapes, etc.Finally, you may want to add

arrows, boxes or other shapes to conveycertain ideas. You may e.g. want to draw a mind-map. You can

easily doso using the drawing toolbar.Simply select a shape by clicking on the appropriate

button and startdrawing. To draw, move your mouse to the point where you want theupper left

corner of the object to be. Press and hold the left mouse buttonand move to the point where the lower

right corner should be located. If the object did not come out quite right, you can

move and resize it like

96 Introduction to


any other object on a slide.Furthermore, you can easily adjust its

properties by using one of theattribute buttons on the drawing toolbar.The ‘draw’ menu offers a

greatnumber of further options.Finally, the ‘draw’ menu features some additional options, such asrotating

objects or placing them in above or below other objects. The‘draw’ menu can also

be found on the drawing toolbar.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

COMING UP

3 3..

RRE E F F I I N N I

I N N G G &&RR

E E H H E E A ARRS S

I I N N G G In this chapter, we learn how to perfect the order of slides, howto add outlines and

summaries,and how to prepare a slide showor printouts for your presentation.Once you have prepared all individual

slides, it is time to polish your presentation by checking the order of the slides, adding outlines

andsummaries, and by rehearsing it. Finally, we will turn to the question of printing your

slides and materials or transferring them to a disk.Before you go on…At this point, you may want

to have a first rehearsal of your presentation. You should try to do the test run without

notes: by now,you have spent considerable time on your presentation, so you should

befairly well acquainted with its content and order. This rehearsal servesseveral purposes:·

to give you a better idea of what you will be saying when eachindividual slide is on·

to time yourself

·

to check whether the content of all slides fits your speech, so thatany mistakes can be

corrected before you invest further work ·

to see if you have trouble remembering certain facts,

figures or discussion points, which can then be put on cue cards for useduring the presentationThe

re are several ways you can rehearse. Pressing5

will start the presentation. You can usen,/,

d,randNor the leftmouse button to move

forward in your presentation, i.e. to put the nextslide on. If you went too far, you can useu

,landPto return to the previous slide.‘Slide show’„

‘Rehearsetimings’Alternatively, you can do a timed rehearsal. To do so, click on ‘Slideshow’, ‘Rehearse timings’ on the

menu bar. The computer will now keeptrack of the time you spend on each slide. When you are done with

your presentation, PowerPoint will tell you the overall total and will give youthe option of saving

the timing for each slide. At this point, you shouldselect ‘no’, to keep PowerPoint from using

these timings toautomatically switch from slide to slide16

.Adding notes

One of the reasons for the rehearsal was to find out whether you havetrouble remembering certain items. If

you do, you may want todocument them in the notes for the appropriate slides.

Alternatively, youcan direct your notes at your audience and have PowerPoint print themon

your handouts. The choice is up to you.16

You should use the automatic slide timing only when your presentation is complete and you

have rehearsed it severaltimes so that you know your rhythm. Until then, it is best to manually switch from slide to slide


The fourth icon on the viewselector takes you to the ‘slidesorter’ view.‘View’„

‘Slide sorter’Check the order of your slides

Another reason for the rehearsal was to check whether your slides are ina sensible order so that your

presentation flows naturally and does not jump from topic to topic. If you want to rearrange your

slides, you canswitch to the ‘slide sorter view’ using the view selection bar or byclicking on

‘View’, ‘Slide sorter’ on the menu bar.The slide sorter view provides you with miniature previews of a

largenumber of slides, allowing you to simply pick them up and drag themaround.PowerPoint in the ‘slide sorter’ view.

To move a slide, simply click on it and keep the left mouse button pressed while

you drag it to its new position.Add outlines and summariesIn the last stage of the content phase, you may want to give

your audience some additional guidance. It is beneficial to start your presentation with an outline

of the subjects that you will discuss, and tosummarize your arguments before reaching a conclusion.

Automatically create a summaryslide…An outline slide is meant to give an overview of the topics that you areabout to

discuss. In most of the cases, it will be sufficient if it simplycontains a list of these topics. Such a

slide, which is called a ‘summaryslide’ in PowerPoint, can easily be created automatically:

simplyhighlight all your slides (or at least the important ones) in the slide sorter view17

and click on the ‘summary slide’ button. This will automatically17

Click on the first slide, press and holds, then click on the last slide. To select or unselect individual slides, press andhold

cwhile clicking on the slides.

General Topics: Getting

Hooked Up 99●●●●●●●●●●●●

insert an outline slide (or possibly several outline slides) containing

thetitles of all the highlighted slides.While PowerPoint calls your outline a summary page,

a real summary page is meant to recapture your main arguments before your conclusion.It is meant to

provide the big picture for the audience that may still bestuck in the detailed arguments that

you presented. Such a page should be written manually.When you are giving a rather long

presentation, it may be a good idea tohave an outline at the beginning and a summary at the end of each

partof the presentation – but this usually applies only to presentations thatlast 10

minutes or longer.‘Format’„

‘Apply designtemplate…’

Add a layout and additional effectsDesign templatesWith the content prepared, we

turn towards the looks of your presentation. If you started out with a blank presentation, you can nowadd

a design template to your slides by selecting ‘Format’ from themenu bar, and then

clicking on ‘Apply design template’. You can thenchoose out of an array of different designs. Your

choice will affect allthe slides in your presentation.‘View’„

‘Normal’

Be aware that design templates also change the fonts used in your slides,so that the text may be

arranged slightly differently. Check eachindividual slide to see if you need to

correct anything. You can switch back from the ‘slide sorter’ view to the ‘normal’ view by

clicking on thefirst icon on the view selector bar, by double-clicking on any individualslide

in the ‘slide sorter’ view or by selecting ‘View’, ‘Normal’ from themenu bar.

Transitions and animationsAlso, if you are delivering your presentation using a beamer or computer

screen, you may want to add some transitions and animations to your slides. Transitions determine how

a new slide replaces its predecessor onthe screen. Your new slides could e.g. fly in from the right

side of thescreen. Or the screen could fade to black and then fade in on the newslide. Animations, on

the other hand determine how individualdiscussion points enter the screen. By default, all your discussion

pointsare immediately visible on your slide. If you select an animation, your slide will

initially be empty (except for the title) and your bullet pointswill enter the screen one by one at the

push of a button.

100 Introduction to


A number of different options available in the ‘slide sorter’ view. First,mark

all the slides to which you want to apply a particular effect. Thenclick on the ‘transition’ field and select

a transition effect. The sameholds for animations. You will see a miniature preview once

you haveselected any effect.Choose your transition here……and your animation here.

Rehearsing your presentationFinally, you may want to rehearse your presentation for a couple

moretimes. (You will find more detailed information regarding timed andnon-timed rehearsal on p.

97.) This is also the time to prepare your cuecards.Transferring your presentation

There are many different ways to take your slides to the presentation. If you know that you can use a

beamer or computer screen when deliveringyour presentation, you will want to take them in

electronic form.Otherwise, you will need to create sheets for an overhead projector.Finally, you may

want to distribute handouts so that your audience cantake notes during the presentation.

This saves your presentation…Transferring your slides in electronic formIf you know that PowerPoint is installed on the

PC you will be usingduring your presentation, you only need to save your presentation. To

doso, click on the ‘save’ button. By default, your slides will be saved as anormal

‘presentation’. Instead, you may opt to save it as a ‘PowerPointshow’. The difference is

marginal: when you open a ‘PowerPoint show’,the presentation starts immediately.

This saves some time because it willnot open directly in PowerPoint and you do not need to press

5

to startthe presentation. To save your slides as a show, select ‘PowerPointsho

w’ in the ‘save as type’ selection box. Once you have saved the file,you can transfer it to a

floppy disk or email it to the place were you willuse it.‘File’„

‘Pack and go’

If, however, there are doubts whether you have PowerPoint availableduring your

presentation, it is best to go with the ‘Pack and go’ wizard.Simply click on ‘File’ from the menu

bar, and then select ‘Pack and go’.This wizard packages your presentation so you can use it on

anyWindows-PC. The first step does not require any action, so you canimmediately click on

‘next’.In the second step, you need to indicate which presentation you want to package. For

now, we assume that you want to use the presentation thatyou are currently working on.


In the third step, you can choose where you want to save the final result. Next, PowerPoint needs to know

what it should include. If you includedany graphics or other objects, be sure to select ‘include linked

files’. If you used any fancy fonts (instead of the normal fonts that are set bydefault), you should also

select ‘embed TrueType fonts’ to be on the safeside.Finally, if you know that the PC to be used during

your presentationdoes not have PowerPoint installed, youalways

need to include theviewer.This was the last step, clicking on ‘finish’ now will create several files.A

setup file (‘pngsetup’) and one or more archive files (in our case:‘pres0.ppz’). If you

selected a floppy disk drive as a destination, then thefiles may not fit on a single floppy. They

will then be distributed over several disks. To install your presentation, simply run ‘pngsetup’

bydouble-clicking on the icon. This will then allow you to extract your entire presentation to a

destination of your choice. After extraction of thefiles, you will be given the option of immediately

running the presentation.As a final remark: be aware that many things can go wrong. Thecomputer or

beamer you were planning to use may be out of order, your floppy disk may be damaged or you

may be forced to shift to another room that does not have the appropriate equipment

installed. If it is nottoo expensive, it may be advisable to print your

presentation on a set of

102 Introduction to


ordinary overhead sheets (see below) just to be safe.

If you are using an overhead projector In this case, you will have to print a set of overhead sheets.

If you have a printer at home, it may be able to print sheets for you. Please check itsuser manual to see if

it is capable of doing so and if it needs any particular type of sheets. You should be able to get blank

sheets at anydecent stationary store.If you cannot use your own printer to produce sheets,

you can print your sheets in the computer lab. To do so, save your presentation on a floppy(see

above), open it in the SMR and pressc +P. (Donot

press the print button, this will instantaneously create a printout before you canmake any of the required

adjustments!)To avoid making any costly misprints, please follow these

instructions precisely:1.Select ‘Tektronix 850’ as printer.2.Click on ‘Properties’

(right next to the printer name).3.Set ‘transparency’ as the paper source.4.

Close the ‘properties’ window by clicking on ‘ok’.5.Make sure that the number of

copies is set to ‘1’,6.that PowerPoint is about to print ‘slides’,7.and (if you want color sheets)

that ‘grayscale’ and ‘pure black and white’ are not selected.8.Start the print process by clicking on

‘ok’.Please be aware that printing slides (and particularly color slides) issignificantly more expensive

than printing normal documents. Also, youwill need to return the settings to their initial

values after your printout if you intend to print other documents too.

General Topics:


Preparing handouts and notes

PowerPoint can also generate handouts for your audience. There are twodifferent types:

‘handouts’, which only include miniature views of your slides, and ‘notes pages’ which

include a copy of each slide together with the notes that you entered for that slide.For

print options, pressc +P. (Please make sure that a Hewlett-

Packard laser printer is selected at this stage.) To print handouts, simplyselect them from the

‘print what?’ list. You can then choose how manyslides should be printed per page: 2, 3, 4, 6

and 9 are possible values.Three slides are a common value, because this setting

leavesyour audience enough room to take notes for each individualslide.Alternatively,

you can also print notes for your presentation. To print them, all you need to do is to select

‘notes pages’ from the‘print what?’ list.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●


A AP P P

P E E N

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DDI I X X ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

A A..A AS S

E E LLE E C C T T I I

OON N OOF F U U

S S E E F F U U LL E E

X X C C E E LL F F

U U N N C C T T I I OON N S S

This appendix lists a number of useful Excel functions in the areas of mathematics and statistics.

All logical functions are listed as well, asthey play a crucial part in any subject area.For each

function, the following information is given:·

its use·

its

syntax·

an explanation of the variables (if applicable)Also, one or more examples are

provided for most functions.SyntaxSet of grammatical rules. Thesyntax determines in which order you convey information. Just

asthere is a certain order in theEnglish language, e.g. ‘Subject – Verb – Object’ for a normalsentence, there is a certain order to information that

you pass onto your computer. Without thisorder, the computer would beunable to understand thesignificance of each bit of information.

Whenever we discuss the syntax of a function, we will indicate it with aspecial font:

SUM (number 1, number 2, …)Allrequired

parts of a function will be printed in bold. In our example,you will need to include at least

one number in the brackets. You caninclude more numbers, separated by commas18

, but it is not necessary todo so. Note:Mathematical functionsabs() – Absolute value

This function returns theabsolute valueof a number, i.e. the samenumber but without its sign.

ABS (number)where:·

number is a number of your choice or a reference to a

single cellExamples:=ABS(-5)will return 5=ABS(5.867)will return 5.867

exp() – (Natural) exponential functionThis functionraisesEuler’s number

eto a power. In mathematicalterms:x

e

EXP (exponent)where:18

Note that punctuation marks depend on the regional settings of your PC. For

further information, see p. 3.

108 Introduction to


·

exponent is any number or reference to a

single cellExamples:=EXP(0)returns 1=EXP(1)returns 2.7183 (e

, Euler’s number)=EXP(2)returns2

e= 7.389Remark:exp()

is the inverse of ln(), the natural logarithm.ln() – Natural logarithm

This function returns the natural logarithm of a number.LN (number)where:·

number is any positive number or reference to a single cellwhich contains a

positive number Examples:=LN(-1)will return a #NUM! error because the

number is not positive=LN(0)will return a #NUM! error because the

number is not positive=LN(1)will return 0=LN(2.7183)will return 1Remark:

ln()is the inverse of exp(), the natural exponential function.

log() – LogarithmThis function returns the logarithm of a number to a specified base.

LOG (number , base)where:·

number

is any positive number or reference to a single cellwhich contains a positive number o

base

is any positive number or reference to a single cell whichcontains a positive number (optional, if left

empty, ‘10’ will beused)Examples:=LOG(-1)will return a #NUM! error because the

number is not positive=LOG(10)will return 1=LOG(2, 5)will return 0.431

Appendix: A Selection of Useful

Excel Functions 109●●●●●●●●●●●●

Matrix functionsAll matrix functions except

mdeterm()are slightly different fromnormal functions because they need to be

entered for several cellssimultaneously. Such functions are calledarray functions

.To enter such functions, follow these three steps:1.Select as many cells as you need (in the

correct proportion). E.g.if you are calculating the inverse of 2 × 2 matrix, you will

needto select 2 × 2 cells.Array functionsFunctions that are valid for anarray of cells. The result of sucha function not only depends onthe function itself, but

also onthe position of each cell in thearray. E.g. the same functioncould return a different result for cell 2 in row 1 than for cell 4 inrow 3. Array functions

areentered in a different way thannormal functions.2.Enter the formula, e.g.

=MINVERSE (A1:B2)…3.and press

c + s + /to apply it to all selectedcells

simultaneously. Note that the formula for each of the cells has subtly changed. It nowreads

={ MINVERSE (A1:B2) }, to indicate that it is valid for an entirearray of cells.

mdeterm() – Determinant of a matrixReturns the determinant of asquare matrix

. (This function shouldnot beentered as an array function.)

MDETERM (array of cells)where:·

array of cells

is reference to a coherent block of cells with anequal amount of rows and columns (there are no

determinants for non-square matrices)Examples:=MDETERM(A1:B2)

will return the inverse of this 2 × 2 matrix=MDETERM(A1:B3)will return a #VALUE! error

because this is not asquare matrixRemark: if any cells in the matrix are empty or contain text,

mdeterm()will return a #VALUE! error.– minverse() – Inverse of a matrix

Returns the inverse of asquare matrix.This function needs to beentered as an array function!

The resulting matrix will be of the samesize as the original matrix.

110 Introduc


MINVERSE (array of cells)

where:·

array of cellsis reference to a coherent block of cells with anequal amount

of rows and columns (non-square matrices cannot be inverted)Examples:

=MINVERSE(A1:B2)will return the inverse of this 2 × 2 matrix=MINVERSE(A1:B3)

will return a #VALUE! error because this is not asquare matrixRemarks:·

If any cells in the matrix are

empty or contain text,minverse()will return a #VALUE! error.·

Not all square matrices can be inverted.minverse()returns a#NUM! error if a matrix

does not have an inverse.– mmult() – Matrix multiplicationReturns the product of a

matrix multiplication of ak ×mand an

m×nmatrix.This function needs to be entered as an array function!

Theresulting matrix will be of the order k ×n.

MINVERSE (first array, second array)where:·

first array

is reference to a coherent block of cells of any size,i.e. a matrix of the order k ×

m, wherek andmcan be freelychosen·

second array is reference to a coherent block of cells that has asmany rows as there are

columns in the first array, i.e. a matrix of the order m×n

, wherencan be freely chosen butm

isdetermined by the first arrayExamples:=MMULT(A1:B3,G17:I18)will return a 3 × 3 matrix

=MMULT(A1:C3,G17:I18)will return a #VALUE! error, because thenumber of columns in

array one (3) is unequal to the number of rows in array two (2)Remark: if any cells in the matrix are

empty or contain text,mmult()will return a #VALUE! error.

– transpose() – Transposes a matrixReturns the transpose of a matrix, i.e. a matrix whose

rows have beenconverted into columns.This function needs to be entered as an arrayfunction!

If the original matrix is of the order m×n

, then the resultingmatrix will be of the order n×m

.

Appendix: A Selection of Useful

Excel Functions 111●●●●●●●●●●●●

TRANSPOSE (array of cells)

where:·

array of cellsis reference to a coherent block of cellsExample:

=TRANSPOSE(A1:C2)will return a 3 × 2 matrixRemark: there are no restrictions

regarding the content of the cells.Transpose also works with text or empty cells.pi() – p

Returnsp

(pi), 3.141…, accurate to 15 digits.PI ()No parameters are required.

round() – Rounding Rounds a number to a specified amount of digits

after the decimal point.ROUND (number, amount of digits)where:·

number is the number that you want to round·

amount of digits

is the amount of digits after the decimal pointto which you want to round (entering negative

numbers willcause Excel to round before the decimal point)Examples:=ROUND(1.234, 0)

will return 1=ROUND(1.234, 1)will return 1.2=ROUND(42.234, -1)will return 40

sqrt() – Square root Returns the square root of a number.SQRT (number)

where:·

number is any positive number Examples:=SQRT(4)will return 2

=SQRT(-4)will return a #NUM! error, because the square root of anegative

number is not defined

112 Introduction to


sum() – SumsAdds the contents of cells.

SUM (number 1, number 2, …)where:·

number 1

is a number or a reference to a (group of) cellso

you can include additional cell references or numbers up to

atotal of 30 (optional)Examples:=SUM(1,2,3)will return 6=SUM(A1:A200)

will add the contents of all 200 cells and return thetotal=SUM(A1:B3,6,C7)

will add the contents of the number 6 to thecontents of the cells A1:B3 and C7Remark: empty cells or

cells that contain text, logical values or errorswill be ignored.trunc() – Truncation

Truncates a number with a specified precision.TRUNC (number

, amount of digits)where:·

number

is the number that you want to truncateo

amount of digitsis the number of digits after the

decimal pointthat you want to preserve (optional, if left empty, ‘0’ will beused; entering a negative value

for ‘amount of digits’ will cut of digits in front of the decimal point)Examples:=TRUNC(18.956)

returns 18=TRUNC(18.956,1)returns 18.9=TRUNC(18.956,-1)returns 10

Statistical functionsaverage() – MeanReturns the arithmetic mean of the specified

cells or numbers.AVERAGE (number 1, number 2, …)where:·

number 1is a number or a reference to a (group of) cellso

you can include additional cell references or

numbers up to atotal of 30 (optional)

Appendix: A Selectio

n of Useful Excel Functions 113●●●●●●●●●●●●

Examples:

=AVERAGE(1,2,3)will return 2=AVERAGE(A1:A200)will return the average of all

200 cellsRemark: empty cells or cells that contain text, logical values or errorswill be

ignored. A cell that contains a ‘0’ will therefore affect the mean,an empty cell will not.

binomdist() – Binomial distributionReturns the binomial probably of k

successes inntrials, when the probability of a success isp.

BINOMDIST (k, n, p, cumulative)where:·

k is the amount of success, a

natural number between 0 andn·

nis the total amount of trials,

a positive natural number ·

pis the probability for success as a

percentage or decimal value·

cumulativeis a logical value that determines whether the

probability mass function or cumulative probability is returnedExamples:

=BINOMDIST(1,2,50%,false)returns 0.5=BINOMDIST(1,2,0.5,false)returns 0.5

=BINOMDIST(1,2,0.5,true)returns 0.75=BINOMDIST(2,1,0.5,true)returns a #NUM! error

because therecannot be more successes than there are trials=BINOMDIST(1,2,1.1,true)

returns a #NUM! error because probabilities cannot be smaller than 0

(0%) or larger than 1(100%)critbinom() – Binomial distributionDetermines the amount of

successes for which the cumulative probability equals or supersedes a

specified critical value.CRITBINOM (n, p, critical value)where:·

n

is the total amount of trials, a positive natural number ·

pis the probability for

success as a percentage or decimal value·

critical valueis the percentile that you want to

determineExample:=CRITBINOM(10,0.5,0.75)will return 6, because the cumulative

probability for 6 successes is past the 75% threshold(82.8%), while the cum. probability for 5 successes

remained below the critical value (62.3%)

114 Introduction to


00.050.10.150.20.250.301 2 34 5 67 8 91 0 k > 75%

count() – Number of elementsCounts the amount of numbers in a list.

COUNT (number 1, number 2, …)where:·

number 1

is a number or a reference to a (group of) cells·


atotal of 30 (optional)Examples:=COUNT(1,2,3)will return 3

=COUNT(1,"A",3)will return 2=COUNT(A1:A200)will return the amount of cells

between A1 andA200 that contain a numerical valueRemark: empty cells or cells that

contain text, logical values or errorswill be ignored.max() – Largest element

Finds and returns the largest element in a list of numbers.MAX (number 1

, number 2, …)where:·

number 1is a number or a reference to a (group of) cells

o

you can include additional cell references or numbers up to atotal of 30 (optional)Examples:

=MAX(1,2,3)will return 3=MAX(A1:A200)will search the cells between A1 and A200

and returnthe largest value=MAX(A1:A200, 10)will return 10 or the largest value found

betweenA1 and A200, whichever is larger

Appendix: A

Selection of Useful Excel Functions 115

●●●●●●●●●●●●

Remark: empty cells or cells that contain text, logical values or errorswill be ignored.

median() – MedianReturns the median of a list of numbers, i.e. it returns the middle value.

MEDIAN (number 1, number 2, …)where:·

number 1

is a number or a reference to a (group of) cells; thenumbers do not need to be orders

according to valueo

you can include additional cell references or numbers up to atotal of 30

(optional)Examples:=MEDIAN(1,2,3)will return 2=MEDIAN(1,2,3,4)

will return 2.5 (the average of 2 and 3)=MEDIAN(1,2,3,5)

will return 2.5 (the average of 2 and 3)=MEDIAN(2,5,1,3)will return 2.5 (the average of

2 and 3)Remark: empty cells or cells that contain text, logical values or errorswill be

ignored. A cell that contains a ‘0’ will therefore affect themedian, an empty cell will not.

min() – Smallest element Finds and returns the smallest element from a list of numbers.

MIN (number 1, number 2, …)where:·

number 1



atotal of 30 (optional)Examples:=MIN(1,2,3)will return 1=MIN(A1:A200)

will search the cells between A1 and A200 and returnthe smallest value=MIN(A1:A200, 5)

will return 5 or the smallest value found betweenA1 and A200, whichever is smaller Remark:

empty cells or cells that contain text, logical values or errorswill be ignored.


normdist() – Normal distributionReturns the (cumulative) probability for a point under a

normaldistribution with a given mean and standard deviation.NORMDIST (x, mean,

standard deviation, cumulative)where:·

x

is the value for which you want the probability·

meanis the mean of the normal distribution

·

standard deviationis the standard deviation of the normaldistribution·

cumulativeis a logical value that determines whether thecumulative probability is

returned (for most intents and purposes,this value will be set to true)Examples:

=NORMDIST(75,80,5,TRUE)will return 0.159

=NORMDIST(A1,100,25,TRUE)will return the cumulative probability under the

normal distribution withm

= 100 ands

= 25 on the interval [– ∞

, A1] (see graph)normsdist() –Standard normal distributionWorks like

normdist(), but uses the standard normal distribution.normsdist()

returns only the cumulative probability.NORMDIST (z)where:·

z

is the value for which you want the probabilityExample:=NORMSDIST(0)

will return 0.50norminv() – Normal distributionReturns the pointx

under a normal distribution with a given mean andstandard deviation for

which the interval [– ∞

,x] yields a given probability.

NORMINV (probability, mean, standard deviation)where:

Appendi

x: A Selection of Useful Excel

Functions 117●●●●●●●●●●●●

·

probability is the cumulative probability

under the normaldistribution on the interval [– ∞

,x]

·

meanis the mean of the normal distribution·

standard deviation

is the standard deviation of the normaldistributionExamples:=NORMINV(0.5,100,10)will return 100

=NORMINV(40%,100,25)will return the pointxindicated in the graph below

normsinv() –Standard normal distributionWorks likenorminv()

, but uses the standard normal distribution.NORMSINV (probability)where:·

probability

is the cumulative probability under the standardnormal distribution on the interval [– ∞

,z ]Example:=NORMSINV(50%)will return 0

percentile() – PercentilesReturns the specified percentile.PERCENTILE (array of

cells, percentile)where:·

array of cells

is reference to a coherent block of cells·

percentileis the percentile as a decimal

value between 0 and 1Examples:=PERCENTILE(A1:A200,0.1)will return the 10th

percentile=PERCENTILE(A1:A200,1.1)will return a #NUM! error

becausethere is no 110th

percentileRemarks:·

if the array contains less

than 1 or more than 8,191 elements,percentile()will return a #NUM! error ·

empty cells or cells that contain text, logical values or errors will

118 Introduc


be ignored·

percentile(A1:A200,0)

is equivalent tomin(A1:A200)·

percentile(A1:A200,0.5)is equivalent tomedian(A1:A200)

·

percentile(A1:A200,1)is equivalent tomax(A1:A200)quartile() – Quartiles

Returns a specified quartile.QUARTILE (array of cells, QUARTILE)

where:·

array of cellsis reference to a coherent block of cells·

quartiledetermines, which quartile will be returned:§0 – the minimum value§

1 – the lower quartile§2 – the median§3 – the upper quartile§

4 – the maximum valueExamples:=PERCENTILE(A1:A200,1)will return the lower quartile

=PERCENTILE(A1:A200,6)will return a #NUM! error because thesecond value needs to be a

natural number between 0 and 4Remarks:·

if the array contains less than 1 or more

than 8,191 elements,quartile()will return a #NUM! error ·

empty cells or cells that

contain text, logical values or errors will be ignored·

quartile(A1:A200,0)is equivalent to

min(A1:A200)·

quartile(A1:A200,2)is equivalent tomedian(A1:A200)·

quartile(A1:A200,4)is equivalent tomax(A1:A200)stdev() – Standard deviation

Calculates the standard deviation of a sample.STDEV (number 1, number 2, …

)where:·

number 1is a number or a reference to a (group of) cellso

you can include additional cell references or numbers up to atotal of 30 (optional)Example:

=STDEV(A1:A10)will return the standard deviation of the valuescontained

in the cells A1 through A10.

Appendix: A Selection of

Useful Excel Functions 119●●●●●●●●●●●●

tdist() – Student t-distribution

Returns the one- or two-tailed cumulative probability for a point under aT-distribution with given

degrees of freedom.TDIST (x, d.f., tails)where:·

x

is the value for which you want the probability·

d.f.indicates the degrees of

freedom of the distribution·

tailsindicates whether you want the one- or two-tailed

probabilityExamples:=TDIST(1,200,1)will return 0.159 (see graph)

=TDIST(1,200,2)is equivalent to=2*TDIST(1,200,1)Remark: when d.f. < 1 or when

tails does not equal 1 or 2, tdist() willreturn a #NUM! error.tinv() – Student t-distribution

Returns the pointxwhich cuts off a given probability in both tails of

astudent T-distribution with given degrees of freedom.

TINV (probability, d.f.)where:·

probability is the total cumulative

probability that should be leftin both tails (e.g. 5% in total implies 2.5% in each tail, see graph)·

d.f.indicates the degrees of freedom of the distribution

120 Introduc


Example:=TINV(5%,200)

will return 1.972 (see graph)var() – VarianceCalculates the variance of a sample.

VAR (number 1, number 2, …)where:·

number 1



atotal of 30 (optional)Example:=VAR(A1:A10)will return the standard

deviation of the valuescontained in the cells A1 through A10.Logical statementA comparison of two pieces of information that is

either corrector incorrect, e.g. 0 = 1 is such astatement, and it is incorrect.Logical functionsLogical functions allow

a computer to deal with logical statements. Alogical statement is a statement that

compares one bit of informationwith another to check whether they fulfill a certain

condition. For instance,A2 = 2is such a statement. Here, the two bits of informationare

the cell ‘A2’ and the number ‘2’, and the condition is that both bitsof information must be equal to

each other. Another statement would beA2 > 2. In this case, the condition is

that the cell ‘A2’ must contain avalue that is larger than 2.Excel will try to determine

whether a condition has been met or not. Inour latter example,A2 > 2

, the condition would be met e.g. if the cell‘A2’ contains the value ‘3’, because 3 > 2.

In that case, we say that astatement istrueor correct. If, however, the cell ‘A2’ e.g.

contained thevalue ‘1’, then the condition would not be met. We would say that thestatement is

falseor incorrect.The decision whether a statement is true or false is the result of such

alogical statement. Just as=4+3will return 7,=1>0

will return true. This‘response’ can then be used in logical functions e.g. for makingdecision

s.The following logical functions are all based on logical statements.

Appendix: A

Selection of Useful Excel Functions 121

●●●●●●●●●●●●

and()This function will returntrueif all

of the given conditions are true.AND (condition 1, condition 2, …

)where:·

condition 1is a logical statemento

you can include additional logical statements up to a total of 30(optional)Examples:

=AND(1=1, 2<3)will return true because both statements are true

=AND(1=1, 2>3)will return false because at least one statement is false(it does not matter how

many statements are false)false()Returns false.FALSE ()or

FALSENo parameters are required.Remark: the brackets can be omitted.if()

Evaluates a statement and commits an action in response.

IF (condition, response if true, response if false)where:·

conditionis any logical condition·

response if trueis the action committed

when the logicalcondition is trueo

response if falseis the action committed

when the logicalcondition is false (optional)Examples:=IF(A1>A2,A1-A2,A2-A1)

will deduct A2 from A1 if A1 is bigger thanA2 (and vice versa)=IF(0=1,"Your PC is

drunk!","Everything is fine.")will always return“Everything is fine”, because 0 is never equal to 1

(unlessyour PC is drunk)Remarks:·

you can refine the condition using theand()

,or()andnot()functions·

you can include up to 7 further

if()functions in the responses

122 Introduction to


not()Reverses the condition, i.e. returnstrue

for a condition that isfalseandfalsefor a condition that is

true.NOT (condition)where:·

condition

is a logical statementExamples:=NOT(2<3)will return false, because the

original statement is true=NOT(1=0)will return true, because the original

statement is falseor()This function will returntrueif

at least oneof the given conditions istrue.OR (condition 1

, condition 2, …)where:·

condition 1is a logical statement

o

you can include additional logical statements up to a total of 30(optional)Examples:

=OR(1=1, 2>3)will return true because at least one statement is true (itdoes not matter how

many statements are true)=OR(1=0, 2>3)will return false because all

statements are falsetrue()Returns true.TRUE ()or TRUE

No parameters are required.Remarks: the brackets can be omitted.●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

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