Introduction
Microsoft Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that may be used to store, organize, and manipulate data. The vertical columns may be represented by letters that appear in alphabetical order while horizontal rows can be identified by numbers. Columns that go beyond the number of alphabetical letters can be represented by two or more than two letters, for example, AA or AB (Held, 2007). An intersection occurs between the rows and columns and appears in the shape of a rectangle, known as a cell. Each cell in the spreadsheet may be given a reference or address that helps to identify it since the cells in the spreadsheet are numerous. The cell reference comprises a combination of column letters and row numbers e.g.BB246 (Walkenbach, 2010).
Functions of Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel has a number of functions which include functional aspects. This consists of the cell which can be a text or value which identifies the information in the cell. Examples of types of information found in cells include address, color, contents, file name, which includes the reference, format, parentheses ad prefix. Another function is the error type. Error value occurs in formats such as “NULL”, “REF”, and “NUM!” Etc, which may indicate error type, returns as 1, 2, and 3 accordingly.
Security Function
Another function of the program is the security function which prevents revealing sensitive or confidential information to other people. This can be found in the info-type-text which identifies what information one needs to be returned. NA means that no value could be identified. The function can mainly be used to mark empty cells. This can be done by entering the value in cells with missing information to avoid the inclusion of empty cells in calculations (Koers, 2010).
This can be found in the directory whereby sensitive information can be returned to the path of the current directory or folder, “me avail” that identifies the amount of information stored and available memory in bytes and “num file” which identifies the total number of active worksheets in the workbooks that are open.“IS” can be described as another function of the excel program that describes the nine functions of the worksheet used to test the value or reference (Frye, 2009).
Logical Function
Another major function of the Microsoft excel function is the logical function that incorporates aspects such as “AND” which returns “TRUE” if all its arguments are “TRUE” and “FALSE” if all or one argument is “FALSE”. The word “FALSE” can be typed directly on the worksheet whereby the program identifies it as the logical value of “FALSE” as is the case with other similar values. “IF” function may return a single value if a situation becomes identified and evaluated as TRUE while another gets identified as “FALSE”.
“NOT” reverses the value and can be used when one wants to ensure that value will not be equal to any other value. In this case, “NOT” can be identified as a logical value and can be evaluated to be “TRUE” or “FALSE”. Finally, the “OR” function returns “TRUE” if any argument gets considered to be “TRUE” and “FALSE” if all arguments get identified to be “FALSE” (Harvey, 2007).
Conclusion
Microsoft Excel is a program that gets mainly used for calculations and data entry. It is immensely essential that one acquires relevant knowledge on the basics of the program before settling down to use it. This helps to avoid mistakes and hence feeding or retrieving the wrong information. It also calls for a lot of seriousness and cares to avoid mistakes that could lead to distortion of the required information.
References
Frye, C. (2009). Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Plain & Simple. United States of America: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Harvey, G. (2007). Excel 2007 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies. India: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Held, B. (2007). Microsoft Excel Functions & Formulas. United States of America: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Koers, D. (2010). Excel 2010 Just the Steps For Dummies. India: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Walkenbach, J. (2010). Excel Dashboards and Reports. India: Wiley Publishing, Inc.