From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Create a simple data table

From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Create a simple data table

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- [Instructor] Let's take a look at how to create a basic spreadsheet from scratch. At its most basic level, a spreadsheet is the digital equivalent of a paper ledger sheet. Like ledgers, spreadsheets are comprised of a grid of rows and columns and can be used for balancing your checkbook, calculating loans, managing the address and contact information of customers, and so on. One of the advantages of spreadsheet programs is that they can quickly perform complex calculations once you've set them up to do so. I'll start by creating a new blank workbook, and I'll make that a little larger so we can see it better. Let's say I'm trying to decide between taking two jobs at an hourly rate. One pays more per hour but offers slightly fewer hours than the one that pays less. I'll start by using the first row of columns, B and C, as the headers for the two job calculations. To type into a cell, we just click it. I'll type Job A into B1. To move horizontally from cell to cell, you can press the Tab key on your keyboard. You can go back to the left by holding Shift as you press Tab. But in this case, I do want to type into cell C1, so I'll press Tab again, and I'll label this Job B. And I'll use column A to label all the rows I'm going to need, starting with Hourly Wage. Now, pressing Enter or Return on your keyboard let's you move down a single column. Holding Shift while pressing Return moves you back up. But in this case, I want to go down. And I'll quickly add two more rows of labels for Hours per week and Annual Income. Now, column A isn't quite wide enough for the text that I've typed. So I'll place my mouse cursor between columns A and B. When I see this vertical line with two arrows pointing either way, I can click and drag to the right to make column A a little wider. Okay, so, so far we've added labels to these cells. Cells containing only text and no numbers are generally referred to as labels. Next, I'm going to add the data that I know about each job, starting with the Hourly Wage. Let's say the hourly wage for job A is 1475. I'll press Tab to enter it and move to the next cell. And let's make job B's hourly wage 1585. So that's the basics of creating a spreadsheet and entering data into it. Now, there's a lot more we can do here, like formatting the cells to only accept certain types of data. For example, I could set up the sheet so only numbers could be entered into the job columns, and we can also add formulas to automatically calculate the wages based on the number of available hours. But it all starts with first entering some basic content into your spreadsheet like we've done here.

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