Complex calculations can be constructed by linking cells together. There are some conventions that Excel uses to refer to cells in a workbook. It is also possible to give cells a “name” to be used (instead of the typical A1 style).

Formulas allow spreadsheets to do complex and useful calculations. There are some conventions that Excel requires for formulas to give correct answers.

Dates and times are typically formatted to be easily recognized, but the value of the date in a cell is stored in a way that allows for date and time arithmetic.

Numbers in cells are stored with certain properties (precision) and can be displayed with different formats. But it is possible to have the value shown in the cell differ from the actual value, so displaying and rounding numeric data can be very important.

The simplest kind of data stored in cells is just plain text. There are a number of ways to format text data.

The arrow keys work as you would expect, but adding the control key and/or the shift key makes navigating a workbook much easier.

The mouse will change shapes to allow different kinds of actions with the left mouse button. The right mouse button will reveal context specific menus.

Other functionality can be added to Excel and new menus will show for those add-ins.

While the Page Layout controls how a spreadsheet will print, the View menu allows you to control how the spreadsheet appears on your screen. Accessing macros (covered later) is also in this menu.

This menu contains some word processing features (spell check) and the ability to create comments for documenting a worksheet. Worksheets can also be protected so that they are not accidentally edited by other users.