From the course: Excel Essential Training (Microsoft 365)

Exploring data entry, editing, and AutoFill

From the course: Excel Essential Training (Microsoft 365)

Exploring data entry, editing, and AutoFill

- [Instructor] Data entry is one of the most basic things we do in Excel. It can be a bit boring, but at the same time we do have to do this from time to time. On this worksheet, we're going to be putting in some data related to a small business. Imagine that we've started this about six months ago. It's mid-year. We want to track our sales, expenses and hopefully profit. In the lower right-hand corner you'll see something called the zoom slider bar. We're only going to be using about seven columns or so. So let's make this zoom factor larger. If we drag that black box to the right you'll see what's happening here. We don't care about the number exactly but note the percent changes on the right there. That's good enough. So in cell A2, remember we can press down arrow to move around to different cells. We can point with the mouse and click. But starting in cell A2 we're going to be putting in the word sales. And as soon as we start typing it, we realized it's on the left side of the cell. And nothing wrong with that and perhaps we'll leave it that way. Text entries in Excel are always aligned on the left side of the cell. Now I can finish this by pressing Enter to move downward into the next cell or tab to move rightward. And you can also use the arrow keys. I'll use Enter here. And now I'll type the word overhead and Enter. And then it occurs to me that maybe I should have put in expenses there, maybe that's a little clearer. I don't have to erase this. I'll just go back to that cell and type right over it. Expenses. Now maybe I've typed it the British way, the Canadian way, not really wrong, but I want to change that C there to an S. What do we do? We can edit a cell. If we don't want to completely retype it, we can double click within it. That's one of a number of ways we can edit a cell. So with the mouse, I'll point near the letter C, double click. So I'm right behind the letter C. I'll press Backspace, then S, and then Enter. Profit. We're done with that portion of it. Now I want to put in some numbers. Imagine I've got Caps Lock on and maybe I forgot that I'm going to type 120 here. I just happened to type O, it's right next to zero on the keyboard. Easy mistake. I don't recognize anything unusual just yet. I press Tab and now I type 160. And imagine I'm typing it correctly and I press Tab and of course something is wrong. And it's that O there. So what happens? What are we recognizing here? Anytime we enter a number or a value in Excel, it's automatically right aligned. And that's the way most numbers should stay. Unless perhaps there's serial numbers or part numbers. We'll simply go back here and type this correctly and then press Tab, 160. And I'll simply type in a few more numbers here. Pressing Tab at the end of each one. And after that last one, I'll press Enter because I was pressing Tab, this automatically returns me to the beginning of the next line. And here too, I'll simply put in numbers here, pressing Tab at the completion of each one. And now I will put in some monthly names up here. As I'm typing January here, it occurs to me I really don't want to be typing all the other months as well too. And what if I were doing 12 months here? Not so well known at least initially is a great shortcut in Excel. Any time you have a monthly entry, it can be any of the 12 months, if you point to the lower right-hand corner of the cell, that's called the fill handle. Notice is how the mouse pointer changes from a thick plus into a thin plus. I'm holding down the left mouse button now and dragging rightward. And you see the popups below that. We'll get the other months in place. And I could have dragged that all the way out for all 12 months as well too. So anytime you have any monthly entry, you can drag from the lower right-hand corner and if you drag across or down, you will get the other months as well. And on the next worksheet called autofill I've got some of these set up. So here's January, drag from that lower right-hand corner. In a different list here, starting with April. I could drag rightward, see what happens there. And you can even drag, although it's unlikely or not very common to drag upward, do it that way. Same thing happens with days of the week. Same idea. Often you would start with Monday but doesn't have to do that. And if you start farther than you need, it just recycles. And with both situations too, if you start with three-letter abbreviations, that's a three-letter abbreviation right there for September. Often you wouldn't start there, but if we drag downward you're seeing what's happening there too. And same thing with days of the week. There are three-letter abbreviations. And anytime you're putting in the letter Q along with any of the numbers one through four and most often you would start with a one, drag downward here, you get a series that way. If we drag rightward, same thing would happen here too. And this works with Qtr and Quarter1. So there are lots of different builtin shortcuts here. And you can even build your own list called custom lists if you have a certain sequence of entries that you need often. So I've seen some shortcuts here related to dated entry but also just the basic concept, numbers are right align, text is left align. In later movies we'll talk about alignment issues and how to make this information look more presentable.

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