Excellent Excel

We shall now begin with anoher office tool of microsoft which is, you've guessed it, Excel. We'll use the 2007 version. 

Files produced in Excel 2007 have the file extension ".xlsx", and the files themselves are very different from previous file formats. If you wish to use an old Excel spreadsheet in Excel 2007, Excel will switch to compatibility mode, to let you work 

on the old file with no problems. You can then save this file in Excel 97-2003 format, or you can save it in the new Excel 2007 format. 

If you give a copy of a new Excel file to a colleague who is using an older version, they will not be able to read it initially. However, their Excel will detect this new format, and will invite them to download and install a compatibility pack. Once they have done this they will be able to work on Excel 2007 files in their older version. 

First of all, let's get a quick overview of the Excel spreadsheet.

A spreadsheet is a numerical tool that is easy to use but deceptively powerful. It revolves around collections of worksheets, each of which consists of rows labelled 

numerically, and columns labelled alphabetically. At each intersection of a row and a column is a cell, referred to by its position, A3, B1 C265, etc. 

Into these cells you type data, and then operate on these numbers by adding functions. These might produce running totals of columns, multiply numbers in adjacent rows together, or do any kind of numerical operation. The clever part happens when you 

change the data, however, because spreadsheets work dynamically. This means that totals, or results of calculations, are updated automatically when any relevant number in the worksheet changes. 

An obvious example of the use of a spreadsheet is a bank statement. This contains a description of transactions in one column, credits in another column, and debits in the third column. At the top of the sheet is the previous balance and at the bottom is the new balance, which is worked out as new balance = previous balance -total debits + total credits Following on from this, business balance sheets are another popular example of spreadsheets at work. 

On a more imaginative level though, spreadsheets can be used to record scientific measurements and dynamically calculate the parameter of interest, and at Corporate Information and Computing Services a spreadsheet is used to record course bookings and attendance in order to forecast demand for the next session.