cells are the building blocks of an
Excel spreadsheet
the little rectangles where different
columns and rows intersect you will need
to know how to work with these cells in
order to organize calculate and analyze
the contents of your spreadsheet to
select the cell just click you can even
use the arrow keys on your keyboard to
navigate to different cells instead of
clicking with your mouse to select more
than one cell at a time click and drag
and the entire range will be highlighted
you can enter lots of things into a cell
for example all of mine contain text but
cells can contain advanced properties
too like formatting comments formulas
and functions we'll take a look at those
in another series of lessons right now
I'd like to show you the basics while we
work on filling out this list for an
office Christmas party let's start with
inserting content into a cell one of my
co-workers has just confirmed that she's
attending so I'm going to select the
cell next to her name then type an X it
appears in the cell and in the formula
bar where you can also enter or edit the
contents of your cell I'm going to go
ahead and change this to a capital X so
it's consistent with the rest of the
list now for the next person whoops
looks like I made a mistake this person
is on the list twice here and here I'm
just going to delete the contents of the
extra row by finding the clear command
on the ribbon the one with the little
eraser then choosing clear contents you
can also use the backspace or delete
keys on your keyboard so let's take a
look at what that did it cleared the
contents but the row is still there
that's okay if you want to delete the
cells altogether
all you have to do is click the delete
command instead that actually removes
the cells from the spreadsheet causing
the cells underneath to shift up and
fill in the gap just take care to
remember the difference between clearing
the contents and deleting the cell so
you don't accidentally remove any cells
columns or rows that you want it to keep
now I'd like to show you how to save
some time by copying and pasting content
I need to mark the rest of the people
who are bringing a guest
so I'm going to select any one of these
cells that contains an X then I'm going
to click copy select the cells where I
want the X to go and paste to access
more paste options open the drop down
menu here these commands will be more
useful to advanced users who are working
with cells that contain formulas or
formatting you can also get to these
commands by right-clicking a cell in the
worksheet for example to cut and paste
select your cells now right-click then
choose cut the original content will
disappear as soon as you paste it in the
new location there's also the drag and
drop technique for moving cells from one
place to another to drag and drop first
select your cells for example this
column that's too far off to the right
then place your cursor on an outside
edge where it will change to a pointer
now click hold and drag the cells where
you want them to go there that's much
better
to mark the rest of the people who are
going to attend I'm going to use one of
my favorite techniques filling in cells
with the fill handle you can fill
vertically or horizontally by selecting
the cell you want to use then clicking
and dragging the square in the
bottom-right corner
that's the fill handle over the cells
you want to fill now you know the basics
including insert and delete cut copy and
paste drag and drop and using the fill
handle everything you need to work with
cells in Excel 2010
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