Entering Worksheet Content

Entering Worksheet Content

1. Building your worksheet content could not be simpler. Just click in any cell and start typing.

2. Of course, you'll want to think about the layout of your worksheet, but once you know what you intend to include and where it should appear on the sheet, you're ready to start typing.

3. So here I'll start putting in some headings for a list of projects in cells B2 through B5, leaving the top row for a title that I’ll decide upon later.
4. Notice that the contents are wider than the columns are – and some of the letters are being hidden. A quick resolution to that is to double-click each column letter’s right edge and double-click. This widens the column to fit the widest entry – which at this point is the heading.
5. To move through cells manually before making your entries, you can click in each successive cell, or I can use the arrow keys, Enter key, or Tab key to move along.

6. The Arrow keys move you to the cell above, below, or to the left or right of the active cell, and the Tab key moves you to the cell to the right of the one you're in.

7. The Enter key moves you down a cell.

8. You can also select a series of cells to confine your new content to that range of cells before you begin typing—by dragging through the cells with my left mouse button—as I'll do here for my first project, and as I press Enter, it moves me to the next cell in my selection.

9. The final press of the Enter key confirms my entry in this series of 4 cells.

10. To edit a cell, you can either replace its contents entirely by clicking in the cell and typing, or you can use the Formula Bar to edit the content directly. If you’re using the Formula Bar, always press ENTER or click into another cell to commit to your change.

11. You can also edit right in the cell, by double-clicking or pressing the F2 key to activate your cursor within the cell.

TIP! If you’re typing numbers and you see a series of hashtags, that means that Excel can’t show all of the numbers, so it’s not showing any of them. If it’s a slight adjustment to make them fit, Excel will fix that for you. If not, you will have to resize the column manually.

12. Editing on the formula bar or in the cell is usually done when you want to correct or add to what's already in the cell versus replacing its contents entirely.

13. You can move content from place to place in the same worksheet by dragging with your left mouse button—point to the edge of the cell, and when you see a 4-headed arrow, drag and drop into the cell where you want the content to appear.
    
    So, if I typed a new column heading and accidentally placed it in the wrong cell, I can easily drag it to where I meant to insert it.

14. Copying from place to place in the same worksheet works the same way, but you hold the CTRL key as you drag, and that makes the move into a copy.

So here, where I want to add a new record and almost everything but the dates will be the same, I can copy the range instead of typing it all over again. And then I can update whatever is different between these 2 projects.

15. And here’s another tip. When dragging to make a copy, be sure to release the mouse before the CTRL Key or it will revert to a move.
    
    In my second drag, notice that it moved, rather than copying, the selected range – because I let go of the CTRL key too soon.