Let's create our first dataset by using the following steps:
First, fire up Excel 2013 and create a new spreadsheet. We will begin with creating some data manually as an introduction to gathering data. We will begin with typing in cell A1, as shown in the following screenshot:
Type
Revenue
in cell A1 andName
in cell B1, as shown in the following screenshot. These are going to be our column headings of our dataset.We are now going to apply styles to the column headings so that they stand out. Highlight columns A1 and B1 and press Ctrl + B. This action will make the two strings that we selected bold. Another option is to highlight the cells and click on the Bold button in the toolbar, as shown in the following screenshot:
Now, type
321
,45
,7
, and23
in the Revenue column. Then, typeDavid
,Bob
,Bill
, andMike
in the Name column. Your spreadsheet should look like the example in the following screenshot:For our finishing touches, we can apply styles to our data by adding borders around the cells. We can accomplish this by highlighting the cells A1 through B5 and clicking on the Borders button. This will bring up a new menu. Select All Borders. Remember that you need to first highlight the cells you want to add the borders to. Refer to the following screenshot:
Congratulations! You have just learned how to enter numbers, strings, and column headers in an Excel spreadsheet. You have also learned how to apply styles to the text and cells using various built-in Excel functions. You can think of this as your first Hello World program in Excel 2013. Your final output should look like this: