Four Skills That Will Turn You Into a Spreadsheet Ninja. Spreadsheets are one of the most mystifying pieces of software youll encounter in your adult life. As scary as they can be, though, you can do an awful lot with just four simple skills. Libreoffice Calc Link To Sheet' title='Libreoffice Calc Link To Sheet' />For the purposes of this article, well be focusing on Microsoft Excel, since this is the most widely used spreadsheet software. However, nearly all of these skills and features are useful in Libre. Office and Google Drive. Well make notes when necessary to highlight the differences between the suites. Input Data Easily with Forms. Home Office Merge multiple excel files into a single spreadsheet MS Excel 2007 Merge multiple excel files into a single spreadsheet MS Excel 2007. Excel functions and addins tools for engineering design for following areas Thermodynamics, hydraulics, piping, slurries, propeties of air, saturated water, steam. Entering data into a spreadsheet is the starting point for any analysis. While you can type the data you need in manually, forms allow you or in some cases, others to quickly enter information line by line without much of a fuss. The Form button has been somewhat coyly hidden in Excel 2. Right click anywhere on the ribbon interface, and select Customize the Ribbon. In the right hand pane, choose a section of the Ribbon to add the Forms button to. Libreoffice Calc Link To Sheet In Excel' title='Libreoffice Calc Link To Sheet In Excel' />On the left hand side, choose Commands Not in the Ribbon from the drop down. In the box below, select Form from the list and click Add to place it in the ribbon. Now that you have the Form button in your ribbon, you can create a data entry form. Start by creating the headers and first row of entries. Once you have your initial set of data in, you can enter in additional rows with the form command. Simply place your cursor in the top left corner of your data set and click the form button. The dialog that will appear allows you to enter information on a per line basis. Fill out the form, press enter, and a new line will be created with all the new information. Create Public Facing Forms with Google Drive. Reported Speech Speaking Activities Pdf'>Reported Speech Speaking Activities Pdf. Google Drive doesnt have quite the same functionality, but it does have its own forms worth noting. You can create a form either directly in Drive or from within a spreadsheet. Youll create questions for users to answer and their responses will populate a sheet. To create a form From within a spreadsheet, click Insert Form. Enter a description at the top of the form. Enter and modify each question Enter a title in the Question title box. Choose the Question Type. Optional Choose a form of data validation. You can use this to confirm that data entered adheres to a specific type, such as a number within a set range, or text in the form of an email address. Optional Select Required question. Once the form is completed, you can share it publicly or email it to a select group of respondents. All entries will be automatically placed into columns alongside a timestamp indicating when the data was submitted. Perform Calculations with Functions and Formulas. So youve entered a bunch of data, but now you need to do something with it. Functions and formulas allow you to manipulate data in a spreadsheet. You can perform simple math, like add up the numbers in a column, get an average, or even work with real world things like dates or financial calculations. The various spreadsheet programs all have their own set of functions, and while many of them are shared between the different suites, there are some differences, so be sure to check out the full list for Excel, Libre. Office, and Google Drive. With that in mind, here are a few examples of what you can do. Perform Basic Math. At their simplest, functions can perform basic math using any data youve entered. For example, say you need to add the numbers in two cells together. For that, youd use the SUM function SUMA1,B1This will add the contents of cells A1 and B1 together. For simple math, you can also use typical shorthand math operators like, and. For instance, the following will perform the exact same math as the example above A1B1. You can add up the values in as many cells as you want. You can do this with a colon, like so SUMA1 A1. The above function will add together all of the numbers in column A between rows 1 and 1. You can find a list of all the math functions Excel can perform here. Make Statistical Calculations. You can also perform statistical calculations on a set of data, including calculating averages medians. As an example AVERAGEA1 A1. The above function will return the average of all cells between A1 and A1. The various functions include both basic and advanced statistics functions. While not all of them will be useful for the casual spreadsheet enthusiast yes, we exist, simple functions like AVERAGE and MEDIAN can be really helpful in everyday work. Format and Calculate Dates and Times. You can also use formulas to manipulate date and time formatted entries. As an example, you can calculate the number of days between two dates with the following function DAYSEnddate,StartdateExcel also includes a function to return the current date TODAYThis function will put todays date in a cell. You can combine these two functions to create a formula to find out how many days are left until a certain date in the future like so DAYSTODAY,TargetdateThere are a number of other date and time functions you can look over here. Combine Multiple Functions to Create Formulas. As you might have noticed in the last example, you can combine multiple functions to create whats known as a formula. Formulas are, essentially, multiple functions put together in one cell. So, for example, if you wanted to add up the numbers in column A and round them to the nearest whole number, you would use the following formula ROUNDSUMA1 A1. The above formula is made up of two functions SUM which is being used as an argument for ROUND. In this statement, cells A1 through A1. ROUND function to be rounded to the nearest whole number. Formulas can be as simple or as complex as youd like, though the more elaborate they get, the more intricate their syntax gets. You can read more about how formula syntax works here. Functions can also be combined with logical functions to create conditional formulas. Building useful formulas is a topic so broad that it could generate its own entire set of articles. Fortunately, our friends at the How To Geek has an in depth set of articles on that very subject. You can find the first lesson here. Sort Data with Filters and Pivot Tables. So youve entered your raw data, made any calculations you need to make, and now its time to actually interpret it. Fritz Box Wlan 3170 Manual English on this page. You have a few options for visualizing your data, depending on how you need to use it. Sort by Column. Sometimes, you may need to sort your data by one of the categories youve entered. Just like your i. Tunes music library, you can re order your data by column. To do so Press Ctrl A to select everything in the sheet. Select the Data tab in the Ribbon. Click Sort Choose the Column you want to sort by and what criteria you want to sort with. Click OK. See the above screenshot for exampleweve reordered the entire data set by order number, from least to greatest. Filter Out Duplicate Items. Other times, you may have some duplicate items within a category. In the example above, we have 8 entries, but only 5 names. To filter out those duplicates and see all the names we have as opposed to all the orders, we can use the filtering options under the Data tab in the ribbon. To do so Under Data, click Advanced in the Sort Filter section.