EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNERS (Excel For Beginners Series) H E N RY E M E J I A EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNERS Copyright © 2021 HENRY E MEJIA All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any data retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or other means, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief reviews used in literary reviews and certain non-commercial uses provided by the Copyright Law DISCLAIMER Although the author has made every effort to ensure the information and examples in this book were correct at the press time, the author does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any party for loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause ABOUT THE AUTHOR Henry E Mejia is passionate about progress and goal achieving, he also loves to run and exercise He works in the insurance industry and likes to invest in the stock market While doing that, he devotes some time to create Excel written courses like this one, in order to help people to achieve their professional goals Henry also realized that the vast majority of people use a lot of their work time in front of the computer That time could be used in more productive or more enjoyable activities, if only people knew how to use Excel a little better The goal of Henry's books is to open the door for employees and business owners to use Excel more efficiently, so they can have more and better growth opportunities, progress and free time THANK YOU Thank you for getting this book This book is all about showing you to use of EXCEL BASICS as fast and as simple as possible If you want to help the author produce more books like this one please share your honest review about this book on Amazon CONTENTS OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION GET YOUR 30 PRACTICE SPREADSHEETS (.xlsx) CHAPTER 1: UNDERSTAND WHAT IS EXCEL AND WHY YOU NEED TO MASTER IT CHAPTER 2: START USING EXCEL RIGHT NOW CHAPTER 3: UNDERSTAND EXCEL BASIC PARTS CHAPTER 4: START USING BASIC FORMATTING AND EDITING CHAPTER 5: KNOW AND UNDERSTAND THE BASIC RIGHT CLICK FEATURES CHAPTER 6: LEARN AND USE THE TOP FORMULAS CHAPTER 7: LEARN TO SORT AND FILTER DATABASES CHAPTER 8: CREATE BASIC CONDITIONAL FORMATTING AND HEAT MAPS CHAPTER 9: CREATE BASIC CHARTS AND GRAPHS CHAPTER 10: MANAGE GIANT DATABASES BY CREATING PIVOT TABLES CHAPTER 11: LEARN WHAT MY OTHER BOOKS COULD DO FOR YOU I WOULD LOVE TO READ YOUR COMMENTS OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR GET THE COMPLETE “EXCEL NINJAS” SERIES HERE CLICK HERE AND LEARN MORE ABOUT "EXCEL NINJAS" If you are serious about Excel, this is the series for YOU! - Aubrey Explains everything you need to know – Lucy Great book makes work life a lot easier – JullieMilligan WHAT AN AMAZING BOOK! – Eric Thorley Ready-to-use knowledge! – Wilfredo Contreras Best tutorials ever! – Millie Very clear instructions – Kirk Rick GET THE COMPLETE “EXCEL CHAMPIONS” SERIES HERE CLICK HERE AND LEARN MORE ABOUT "EXCEL CHAMPIONS" To the point how-to roadmap – Elias D Christakis Excellent "Real World" Exercises – David L Gardner Easy to Use and Well Explained - Manuela Tiefenbach Great Book A must have – Wilfredo Contreras Definitely recommended! – Nikki If You Need to Learn VLOOKUP, Buy this! – Guy Best Vlookup Tutorial Ever! – Millie Quick way to learn! – Milena This book is amazing! – Romeo The book has helped me tremendously – John Dunn Love this book so far Very easy to follow and in super easy terms – Nichele Gunby INTRODUCTION Welcome to a new EXCEL FOR BEGINNERS book! The easiest, fastest and most novice-friendly way to start mastering Excel, specially created for people who is starting to interact with this awesome world of Microsoft Excel Because this is a SERIES of books, there might be several other of my books already published by the time you are reading this, so go ahead and get them too! This SERIES is the best Excel investment that you will ever make This “EXCEL FOR BEGINNERS” SERIES is all about: Easy to Follow instructions and exercises Simple and Easy language (no technical words) Step-by-Step Learning Learning through practice (from the very beginning) Making mistakes and learning from them Getting FAST RESULTS by mastering the most important features right away Straightforward and lean approach to make the best use of your time Fully Exercise-based (Practice makes progress) Becoming proficient in less than 10 hours! When I was thinking about this series, what I wanted to create was a series of books worthy enough for you to say “This book is easy, is understandable, it gets the things done!”, and that’s exactly what you get with all the EXCEL FOR BEGINNERS books! That being said, I would like to summarize the benefits you will experience by completing EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNERS: Become more productive Increase chances of getting a promotion and better jobs (More money!) Experience less workload (Excel does the heavy lifting) Have more free time That way, your chart will change automatically! CONGRATULATIONS! Now you know the fastest way to create Charts! You just have one more chapter to go, PIVOT TABLES! MORE EXERCISES: ExcelBasicsChapter9ex3.xlsx ExcelBasicsChapter9ex4.xlsx QUICK CHAPTER SUMMARY: Charts are created to TELL a story! They are a visual representation of data The most widely used are Bar Charts and Pie Charts You can quickly create a chart You may want to grab one of my books that is completely about Charts! CHAPTER 10 MANAGE GIANT DATABASES BY CREATING PIVOT TABLES GO BACK TO CONTENTS This is the last chapter of the book so I really want to congratulate you on coming so far I have really saved the best tool for this final chapter Before starting I want you to know that Pivot Tables are not a “beginner thing” Instead, you need to really become more familiarized and comfortable with all the topics inside this book before attempting to become a Pivot Table superstar Nevertheless, I wanted to add this chapter at the end of the book because it serves as an introduction to Pivot Tables for you You can also find my books that teach Pivot Tables from A to Z, those are entire books explaining just Pivot Tables! That said, let’s continue Here you are going to learn to create powerful Pivot Tables out of a big database, and it is going to save you lots of wasted time, and, as you may know, time is money! So, you are going to end up saving money and gaining powerful insight on the data you have WHAT IS EXACTLY A PIVOT TABLE? A Pivot Table is a DYNAMIC TABLE that is shaped according to your needs In other words, you create a Pivot Table with some clicks and dragging some items, and you get to visualize the information you want, in the shape you want, ordered as you want in a matter of seconds The main fact here is that those “clicks and dragged items” MUST BE THE CORRECT ONES! If you screw it up and it incorrectly, you will get a huge mess WHERE DOES A PIVOT TABLE COME FROM? You have to know that a Pivot Table is created out of a DATABASE In other words, THE DATABASE FEEDS THE PIVOT TABLE, always remember that As an example, here you have the database that we’re going to be using during this chapter (obviously it is going to have more rows) Notice that is has columns or categories, if you will: Name, Quarter Paid, Studio Company, Salary and Bonus NAME CHRIS EVANS ROBERT DOWNEY JR JENNIFER LAWRENCE CHANNING TATUM GEORGE CLOONEY JOHNNY DEPP QUARTER PAID Q1 STUDIO COMPANY Lions Gate Q2 20th Century Fox 89754 5329 Q3 Universal Studios Metro-GoldwynMayer Paramount Pictures Warner Bros 78008 7092 98783 79821 78171 5437 5354 7345 Q4 Q3 Q4 SALARYBONUS 97392 5254 Just imagine that you are trying to solve these questions, WITHOUT Piot Tables, just using the Filters I taught you in Chapter 7: How much bonus was paid each Quarter? How much bonus was paid by each Company? How much was paid in Salaries in the third Quarter by Lions Gate company? Well, you would have to take some minutes to sort, filter and perform each calculation in order to get all those answers, but using Pivot Tables you could have all the answers in less than minute! (Once you have already mastered Pivot Tables, of course) In order to answer the 1st Question “How much bonus was paid each Quarter?” your Pivot Table would look like this: Row Labels Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Sum of BONUS 43284 92146 67624 69233 Grand Total 272287 Notice how I created a simple nice Pivot Table, which took 20 seconds of my time to build, and I got the answer, without mistakes That is the awesome power a Pivot Tables! HOW TO CREATE A PIVOT TABLE? That is exactly what we are going to now Previous to start creating it, these are the requirements: A Database with all the data Remember that the Database feeds the Pivot Table The questions you are trying to answer: Begin with the end in mind, to that you need to be aware of what you are trying to discover For the exercises, we are going to answer the questions: How much bonus was paid by each Company? How much was paid in Salaries in the third Quarter by Lions Gate company? That said, it is time to open your exercise files! Open file ExcelBasicsChapter10ex1.xlsx You will find a Database with 50 rows and columns, as you were told in the first part of this chapter Your job is to answer the following question using a Pivot Table: How much Bonus was paid by each Company? STEP 1: Take a look at the QUESTION and the Database, and find out which columns you are going to need in order to create the Pivot Table To that, ask yourself “Which columns of my database I need to answer the question?” You’ll notice that just Bonus and Companies are required to create the Pivot Table STEP 2: Proceed to INSERT THE PIVOT TABLE TEMPLATE To that first select the whole Database (from B3 to F50) Once you have done that, go to the INSERT TAB of your Ribbon, select Tables and then Pivot Tables When you that a Window will appear, basically asking you if you want your new Pivot Table to be created on a New Worksheet, just click OK STEP 3: You are now in front of the Pivot Table Template and the Pivot Table Creator: (Pivot Table Template) If you click on your Pivot Table Template (which is where you Pivot Table will be created) you’ll notice that another field appears to the right of your display, we’ll call that field the PIVOT TABLE CREATOR Why are we calling it that way? Because with it you will be able to shape and create the Pivot Table the way you want it The Pivot Table Creator has main parts: The labels and the fields where you drag the labels as needed (Labels of the Pivot Table Creator) (Fields of the Pivot Table Creator) THE TRICK IS TO DRAG THE CORRECT LABELS INTO THE CORRECT FIELDS TO CREATE THE PIVOT TABLE THAT WOULD ANSWER YOUR QUESTION! STEP 4: Drag the correct labels in the correct fields Please, drag the “Studio Company” Label to the ROWS field and the “Bonus” Label to the VALUES field Why Studio Company in ROWS? Because that way, each company is going to be shown row by row Why Bonus in VALUES? Because that is the result we want to get Row Labels 20th Century Fox DreamWorks Lions Gate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Paramount Pictures Sony Pictures Universal Studios Warner Bros Grand Total Sum of BONUS 30308 28143 24504 36277 46510 34109 20974 51462 272287 That is the Pivot Table you got by doing that Notice how the total Bonus paid by each company appears next to it automatically That way, you can answer the question correctly and efficiently For the next exercise we are going to create what I call a conditional Pivot Table, because it involves variables (or conditionals) Open file ExcelBasicsChapter10ex2.xlsx You will find the same Database, but now the question we are going to answer is: How much was paid in Salaries in the third Quarter by Lions Gate company? STEP 1: Take a look at the QUESTION and the Database, and find out which columns you are going to need in order to create the Pivot Table To that, ask yourself “Which columns of my database I need to answer the question?” You’ll notice that you need to include: Salaries, Quarter Paid and Companies STEP 2: Proceed to INSERT THE PIVOT TABLE TEMPLATE Follow the exact same procedure than the previous exercise STEP 3: Click on the Pivot Table Creator to display the Pivot Table Fields Follow the same procedure than the previous exercise STEP 4: Drag the correct labels in the correct fields Please, drag the “Studio Company” Label to the ROWS field, the “Quarter Paid” Label to the COLUMNS field and the “Salaries” Label to the VALUES field Why? Studio Company in ROWS because we need to display every single one of them to find Lions Gate Company Quarter Paid in COLUMNS because that way, the salary paid is going to be separated by quarter according to the actual information of the database Salaries in VALUES because that’s the result we want to show Row Labels 20th Century Fox DreamWorks Lions Gate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Paramount Pictures Sony Pictures Universal Studios Warner Bros Grand Total Q1 76066 60198 164379 138942 167068 94954 701607 Q2 186622 220272 63794 126127 170624 163315 127119 127573 1185446 Q3 150264 81036 183954 201321 185802 78008 69752 950137 Q4 74327 196848 141636 90121 258723 761655 Notice how Lions Gate company didn’t pay anything as a Salary in the Quarter! That’s the power of PIVOT TABLES, you have already seen it by yourself! rd CONGRATULATIONS on finishing this course! It has been a great time together and I hope you have enjoyed I and learned a lot Now you are ready to move forward with more advanced Excel skills It would be great if you continued your journey by picking the next book on this series You will be amazed when you finish the whole series and find out that now you are a Pro Excel User QUICK CHAPTER SUMMARY: Databases feed Pivot Tables Pivot Tables are a flexible way to summarize big databases Pivot Tables are used to answer important questions The way you use the Pivot Table Creator determines the quality of your Pivot Table I really enjoyed being with you all this time, and I really hope you got a great amount of value from this book If that’s the case, consider writing a review for this book where you bought it CHAPTER 11 LEARN WHAT MY OTHER BOOKS COULD DO FOR YOU GO BACK TO CONTENTS CONGRATULATIONS! You finished the exercises and now you are ready to continue your journey Within this brief chapter I’m going to explain the benefits you could have by getting my other books EXCEL CHAMPIONS SERIES This series is focused on delivering the most detailed information and exercises, so you can truly master each aspect of Excel Here are some books of Excel Champions Series: EXCEL VLOOKUP CHAMPION Vlookup is one of the most useful Excel functions You can use it in different ways but basically it helps you find information within a giant amount of data Sometimes, you need to find the exact price (or any other information) of a certain Product ID, but you have many products What someone who is not a Vlookup Champion does is to search the price of each product in their database and copy it manually, one by one What a waste of time! What a Vlookup Champion does is to use the formula to get the right prices from the database and in 30 seconds all the prices along with their respective Product ID are in place, with zero errors EXCEL PIVOT TABLE CHAMPION A Pivot Table is absolutely one of the best tools in Excel, the benefits of knowing how to use this tool are a lot since in most cases it is almost impossible to manually perform the work done by the Pivot Table tool If you want to the work manually you would spend at least 10 times more time, it is better to invest that time learning to use the Pivot Tables "By using a Pivot Table, the right way, you can get the answers you want in 10% of the time (or less)" A Pivot Table is used to manage giant data tables (which we will call Source Data from now on), so you can organize the information and get the relevant answers you want EXCEL IF FUNCTION CHAMPION This book was written to teach you the correct way to use the IF Functions and other logical functions quickly and easily It is extremely important that you know that this book is not just about the IF function, it is actually a complete guide about the main logical functions of Excel, so with this book you will also learn to use the following Excel Functions: IF IFS OR AND SUMIF SUMIFS COUNTIF COUNTIFS EXCEL CONDITIONAL FORMATTING CHAMPION If you have ever used graphs in Excel or Power Point you will agree that is better to present data in a visually pleasing way, so that the information is better understood With Conditional Format you can highlight quantitative and qualitative data automatically, which will allow you to better communicate your ideas and allow your other colleagues to understand what you are trying to communicate EXCEL XLOOKUP CHAMPION To be an Excel Champion it is necessary that you master several tools and formulas In this book I will teach you in detail and step by step the XLOOKUP formula The XLOOKUP feature was recently released by Microsoft to the general public in February 2020 and is here to stay In case you know the VLOOKUP function you will know that it is very useful Well, XLOOKUP is more powerful than VLOOKUP XLOOKUP is a search formula that, if used in the right way, helps drastically reduce the time you use in front of the computer when working with databases The most interesting thing is that the Microsoft team managed to make it work in such a way that, in situations where we would have had to use different functions, we can now only use XLOOKUP and get the result we want EXCEL NINJAS SERIES Excel Ninja Series is the fastest, the most practice-based and definitely the most straightforward Excel Book Series you will ever find! EXCEL FORMULAS NINJA A Function is a formula that you can use in Microsoft Excel in order to get an automatic result based on the values that you entered in that formula So, from now on, Functions and Formulas are the same, ok? There are lots of different functions that perform different calculations (too many of them) so learning them all is almost impossible and not time effective because you won’t use them all So, my advice to you is the next one: Learn the most useful functions first Figure out which other function you need to learn in order to complete your work You will find that, in most situations, the formula you need is explained in this book Through Excel Functions Ninja you will learn the most useful and important functions for your work and life! EXCEL SHORTCUTS NINJA A SHORTCUT is a combination of key strokes (in your keyboard) that perform a specific action in your computer They are also known as “Hotkeys” or “Keyboard Shortcuts” Normally, those actions are performed using the mouse trough the Excel spreadsheets and clicking the features in the upper part of Excel (Ribbon) The main benefit of using Excel Shortcuts is the speed You will notice that when you go through the exercises of this book, you will be able to work in Excel at a higher speed EXCEL VLOOKUP FORMULA NINJA You will need to use Vlookup when you have a database, and try to: Find specific information Organize information based on specific criteria Create a Search tool Grab information from multiple databases at the same time Many other tasks related to databases Always remember that Databases will feed your Vlookup formula In other words, without a Database you are not able to use a Vlookup formula So, basically: Databases are your MAIN SOURCE OF INFORMATION, and VLOOKUP is a powerful tool that helps you to obtain the correct information FAST and EASILY! Without being you the one that spends time finding the information manually EXCEL CHARTS AND GRAPHS NINJA In just a few words, a Chart is a visual representation of data The data I’m talking about may be just a few values or a lot of them The main fact here is that a Chart transforms raw data into visual images that include proportions, time, variables, and some other features Charts transform data into images What is even more important is the objective of those charts Always remember that the reason you are creating a chart is to TELL A STORY! That’s it The only reason to create and show a chart is to communicate the story the data is hiding You see, when you have lots of disorganized (or even organized) numbers, it is so hard to tell if things are going the way you want or not Even if you are a numbers maniac (like me) sometimes you may find it hard to recognize the patterns inside those numbers EXCEL PIVOT TABLES AND PIVOT CHARTS NINJA This book is one of my favorite because it blends of the most important features in Excel: Pivot Tables and Charts Because Regular Charts are static and Pivot Tables are dynamic and flexible, instead of using regular charts we need to use Pivot Charts (more on this later) Regarding the title of this chapter, by creative process I don’t mean “innovative” but the process to “create” the desired outcome, which is, a great Pivot Chart that conveys what you want to convey exactly Thus, following this process is science and art It is science because you’ll need some specific steps and rules to follow through, nevertheless you’ll also have the ability to move away from the rule to create your own Pivot Tables and Pivot Chart CONGRATULATIONS, YOU DID IT! I WOULD LOVE TO READ YOUR COMMENTS Before you go, I would like to say Thank You for buying this book I hope that the information you obtained in EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNERS helps you in your job or business, and that you can have greater productivity and more free time to use it in the activities that you like the most I realize that you could have chosen among several other Excel books but you chose this one, and you invested your time and effort I am honored to have the opportunity to help you I’d like to ask you a small favor Could you take one minute to write a Review for EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNES on Amazon? I (and more great people like you around the world) would really appreciate your comments and feedback Share your comments with me and other readers ... EXERCISES: ExcelBasicsChapter4ex2.xlsx ExcelBasicsChapter4ex3.xlsx ExcelBasicsChapter4ex4.xlsx ExcelBasicsChapter4ex5.xlsx ExcelBasicsChapter4ex6.xlsx QUICK CHAPTER SUMMARY: Basic Formatting is one.. .EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNERS (Excel For Beginners Series) H E N RY E M E J I A EXCEL BASICS FOR BEGINNERS Copyright © 2021 HENRY E MEJIA All rights... Sheets and Zoom CHAPTER START USING BASIC FORMATTING AND EDITING GO BACK TO CONTENTS Within this chapter you are going to learn how to use the most important and basic Excel features in order