Entering Data And Editing Cells In Excel 2007
Information is entered into an Excel worksheet by modifying the cells within that sheet. The process is pretty much the same regardless of whether you are entering information into empty cells or cells that already contain data. To enter information into an empty cell, simply activate the cell and then begin typing. As soon as you do, the formula bar becomes activated and two icons appeared to the left of the formula bar.
When you finish typing, you can do one of two things: you can either cancel, to abandon the changes you’ve made to the cell; or you can enter, to confirm the changes you’ve made. If you wish to cancel, either click on the cancel button on the left of the formula bar or press the escape key on your keyboard. If you wish to confirm your changes, you can either click on the Enter button to the left of the formula bar or press the Enter key on your keyboard.
Pressing the Enter key does two things: it confirms your data entry and, normally, moves you down one cell. This is usually fairly convenient. However Excel allows you to choose what happens when you press the Enter key. To do this, click on the Office button and choose Excel options. On the left of the dialog box, click on the advanced Tab. This displays “Editing Options”. The first Editing Option “After pressing enter move selection” allows you to choose the direction in which you move when you press the Enter key.
You have two options: either choose a direction (“down”, “right”, “up” or “left”); or, simply deactivate the movement. This will mean that, whenever you input data and press the Enter key, the information goes into the cell but the cell stays active and you don’t move down one cell.
If you wish to enter data into several cells, Excel allows you to make a selection and then to navigate between the selected cells, entering information as you go. For example, if we wish to fill out an invoice we can select a matrix of cells under the “quantity”, “description” and “unit price” columns. Having entered the quantity, we can then press the Tab key on the keyboard to move to the “description” column. We then press Tab again to move the “price” column, and so forth.
When you reach the last column of the highlighted matrix of cells, pressing Tab moves us to the second highlighted row. Whey you reach the bottom right of the selection, if you continue to press Tab, you move back to the top left once more. Excel even allows you to move backward by pressing Shift and Tab.
You can also move down first and then to the right (as an alternative to moving right and then down). To do so, press the Enter key instead of the Tab key. Naturally, pressing Shift and Enter allows you to move in reverse: up and then to the left.
There are two ways of entering information into a cell that already contains a value. The first is simply to type a new value: activate the cell; type the value and then press the Enter key. The second is to edit the value. To do this, you can either double-click on the cell and make your changes directly within the cell; or you can activate the cell and make your changes in the formula bar.
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