This tutorial will introduce you to Microsoft Excel, a popular spreadsheet application. Spreadsheets were first created for "number crunching"--organizing large amounts of numerical data and performing calculations on that data. Today, spreadsheets are used to keep track of text and numerical data, charting or graphing information, and accessing data from databases. The method the information is presented is often just as important as the data itself, so modern spreadsheets allows the user to control exactly how the data is displayed and printed. Microsoft Excel uses a sophisticated macro language called Visual Basic™ which allows even further customization.
This tutorial assumes you are familiar with the operation system Excel is running on, either Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or Macintosh. You should work through the examples in Excel while answering the questions for the tutorial. To begin, choose from the following outline.