Using Excel

• If you are at the stage where you don't know how to use absolute and relative addessing, I recommend the latest version of the Norton book that you will find cited on my Excel information page. After you have mastered the basic skills in this book, you will be ready to sail.
• The key to good spreadsheets is complete mastery of the basic skills. With them, you will soon be at the point where the only things you enter with a keyboard are 1) raw numbers, 2) labels, 3) operational symbols such as +, -, *, /. Yes - that means you should never type the address of a cell.
• The way to create very good spreadsheets is to 1) stick to a database layout ("flat table") as much as possible, 2) give each raw number its own cell; never type a raw number into a formula, 3) keep formulas simple, 4) put a useful label on each cell or column of cells (If you can't come up with a good label, you probably don't have a good layout.)
• The way to communicate with spreadsheets is to 1) do all of the above, 2) use font colors and fill colors to indicate similar types of quantities, 3) summarize data with well-designed charts.

Revised, 23 August, 2005 , by Jane Hagstrom.