Spreadsheet Models for Managers
Getting Access to Spreadsheet Models for Managers
If 
you use Excel to model businesses, business processes, or
business transactions, this course will change your life. You’ll learn how to create tools for yourself that will amaze
even you. Unrestricted use of this material is available in two ways.
- As a stand-alone Web site
- It resides on your computer, and you can use it anywhere. No need for Internet access.
- At this Web site
- If you have access to the Internet whenever you want to view this material, you can purchase on-line access. Unlimited usage. I’m constantly making improvements and you’ll get them as soon as they’re available.
To Order On Line
| Order "Spreadsheet Models for Managers, on-line edition, one month" by credit card, for USD 69.95 each, using our secure server, and receive download instructions by return email. |
| Order "Spreadsheet Models for Managers, on-line edition, three months" by credit card, for USD 199.00 each, using our secure server, and receive download instructions by return email. |
| Order "Spreadsheet Models for Managers, downloadable hyperbook edition" by credit card, for USD 199.00 each, using our secure server, and receive download instructions by return email. |
To Order by Mail
Make your check payable to Chaco Canyon Consulting, for the amount indicated:
|
And send it to: Chaco Canyon Consulting 700 Huron Avenue, Suite 19C Cambridge, MA 02138 |
To use the course software you’ll need some other applications, which you very probably already have. By placing your order, you’re confirming that you have the software you need, as described on this site.
Spreadsheet Models for Managers
This reading is especially relevant for Session 1Excel Workbooks
To work in Excel, it pays to learn a few basic concepts and commands for making your way around Excel documents. Two fundamental categories of these concepts are the structure of Excel documents and how to move around inside them.
Excel documents are organized as workbooks, which consist of a set of sheets. Sheets can be either worksheets or chart sheets. Knowing your way around workbooks makes life easier. This page contains a collection of some of the things you might find handy, but of course, you could get by without knowing most of this. It would be painful, but you could get by. To avoid pain, let’s introduce you to the basics.
- Sheet tabs
- Active sheet
- Viewing the sheet tabs in a workbook
- Sheet tab context menu
- Selecting a worksheet to view
- Controlling how many sheet tabs you see
- Changing the order of the sheets of a workbook
- Copying the sheets of a workbook
- Selecting sheets
- Deselecting sheets
- Reordering several sheets at once
- Selecting all sheets
- Inserting a new sheet
- Deleting sheets
- Renaming a sheet
- Moving a sheet to another workbook
- Copying a sheet to another workbook
Sheet tabs
The pages of a workbook are sheets. They can be worksheets, consisting of arrays of cells, or they can be charts. The names of the sheets in a workbook appear on the sheet tabs at the lower left of the window. To change a sheet name — whether worksheet or chart — double-click the sheet tab to open a little editor, and edit the name right there in the tab.
Sheet tabs can convey more than the name of the sheet they belong to. For instance, you can assign a color to a sheet tab, and use color to convey additional meaning. We use the color yellow to indicate user-editable items. Thus, if we had a worksheet that contained all the user inputs for a model, we might color its sheet tab yellow. If you use green to indicate outputs or results, worksheets that contain results might have green sheet tabs. To set the color of a sheet tab, click Right (Windows) or Ctrl+Press (Mac) to expose the sheet tab context menu. Then pick a color from the Tab Color… submenu (palette, actually in Excel 2007+).
Active sheet
The active sheet is the sheet where your typing appears. The name of the active sheet is displayed on its sheet tab in boldface.
Viewing the sheet tabs in a workbook
Since there might not be room for the entire row of sheet tabs, there are four scroll buttons for the sheet tabs at the extreme lower left of the screen. You can use them to scroll the sheet tabs left or right, one tab at a time using the inner two scroll buttons, or to scroll all the way to one end or the other using the outer two scroll buttons.
If your workbook has so many sheets that their sheet tabs aren’t all visible at once, and if you find yourself frequently using the sheet tab scroll buttons to expose the sheet tabs you need, there is an alternative. You can
<snip>…
Some of the page you’ve been reading has been suppressed from this sampler. To see the complete version of this article, why not order the full course? It’s available at this Web site or in downloadable format.
| Order "Spreadsheet Models for Managers, on-line edition, three months" by credit card, for USD 199.00 each, using our secure server, and receive download instructions by return email. |
| Order "Spreadsheet Models for Managers, downloadable hyperbook edition" by credit card, for USD 199.00 each, using our secure server, and receive download instructions by return email. |
…<end snip>
Copying a sheet to another workbook
Use the Sheet Tab Context Menu to expose the Move or Copy dialog. Alternatively, to copy a sheet from one workbook to another, Option+Drag (Mac) or Ctrl+Drag (Windows) the sheet tab of the sheet you want to copy from one workbook to the other. If you have a group selected, performing this operation on any member of that group copies the whole group.
Last Modified: Wednesday, 27-Apr-2016 04:15:26 EDT
The first homework assignment has a fair amount of reading attached to it. Some students feel that the best approach is to read it all, and then try to do the homework. For most of us, such an approach doesn’t work very well.
Before you begin the course, read the general material, such as “Getting Started,” “Software You Need for This Course,” and “How to Work.”
Later, as you begin the homework, let the homework drive your reading choices. For instance, the first homework assignment does require that you master certain techniques. Read “Names” and “The Ripple Principle.” Then, if something confuses you, read up on it: examples are “The Basics of Recalculation” and “References.” Learning something when you need it, and only when you need it, is usually the best way to go.
Parentheses sometimes make a real difference. For instance A1*B1+2 is very different from A1*(B1+2). But A1*(B1*2) is exactly the same as A1*B1*2. When the parentheses don’t make any difference in the value of the result, it’s not usually a good idea to include them. They tend to make the formulas harder to read, and there’s always the chance that you’ll put them in the wrong place. More