For Excel 2000 click on Start | Programs | Microsoft Excel or for Excel XP 2002/2003 click on Start | All Programs | Microsoft Word and a blank document opens were you may enter information.

Screen Layout

Below are three toolbars located at the top of the Excel screen. These may be used for shortcuts in many of the activities. If you don't see one of the toolbars, select View | Toolbars and select the missing toolbar.

Menu bar - click on any of the words in this row to see a menu of options in that category - File and Edit are the most commonly used (saving, opening files, copying, and pasting).

Standard toolbar - icons in this row provide shortcuts to many tasks accessible through the menu bar (opening, printing, cutting, pasting) as well as handy functions (AutoSum, chart wizard, etc.).

Formatting toolbar - this row controls the format of text in cells (font, font size, style, color, borders, alignments).

Some important spreadsheet terms

Columns - the vertical divisions in the spreadsheet are called columns and are headed by letters. Excel 2000/XP has 256 columns beginning with A and ending with IV.

Rows - the horizontal divisions in the spreadsheet are called rows and are headed by numbers. Excel 2000/XP has 65,536 rows.

Cells - each individual space in the spreadsheet is called a cell. Cells can contain text, numbers, or both. Each cell has an address such as A1 or G6. There are 16,777,216 cells in each Excel sheet.