For Dummies Excel Formulas and Functions, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-56816-3 Manuel D’Utilisation

In This Chapter

▶ 

Getting the skinny on workbooks and worksheets

▶ 

Understanding the parts of a worksheet

▶ 

Working with cells, ranges, named areas, and tables

▶ 

Applying formatting

▶ 

Figuring out how to use the Help system

▶ 

Writing formulas

▶ 

Using functions in formulas

▶ 

Using nested functions

E

xcel is to computer programs what a Ferrari is to cars: sleek on the out-
side and a lot of power under the hood. Excel is also like a truck — it can 

handle all your data, lots of it. In fact, in Excel 2010, a single worksheet has 
17,179,869,184 places to hold data. Yes, that’s what we said — more than 17 
billion data placeholders. And that’s on just one worksheet!

 

Opening files created in earlier versions of Excel may show just the number of 
worksheet rows and columns available in the version the workbook was cre-
ated with.

Excel is used in all types of businesses. And you know how that’s possible? 
By being able to store and work with any kind of data. It doesn’t matter 
whether you’re in finance or sales, whether you run an online video store or 
organize wilderness trips, or whether you’re charting party RSVPs or track-
ing the scores of your favorite sports teams — Excel can handle all of it. Its 
number-crunching ability is just awesome! And so easy to use!

Just putting a bunch of information on worksheets doesn’t crunch the data or 
give you sums, results, or analyses. If you want to just store your data some-
where, you can use Excel or get a database program instead. In this book, we 

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