Workbooks, worksheets and cells

In this lesson: What a workbook, a worksheet and a cell are, and how to read a cell address like C4 or a range like A1:B4.

Every time you use Excel you work inside three layers. Understanding them now will make everything else in the course easier. A workbook is the Excel file itself. It is what you save, email or open, and it ends in .xlsx. A worksheet (also called a sheet) is one page inside the workbook. Its name shows on a tab at the bottom of the window. A new blank workbook usually starts with one sheet called Sheet1. A cell is a single box on a sheet, and it is where you type your data. Columns run up and down and are named with letters: A, B, C, and so on. Rows run left to right and are numbered 1, 2, 3. A cell's address is its column letter followed by its row number. Every sheet has 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows, so you will not run out of room. Try it yourself:

Open Excel and choose Blank workbook.
Look at the bottom left and find the sheet tab. Notice its name.
Click any cell. Look at the Name Box (the small box above column A). It shows the address of the cell you clicked.
Press the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the active cell, and watch the address change.
Click A1, hold the left mouse button and drag down and across to B4. The block is now selected. A group of cells like this is called a range, and this one is written A1:B4. The colon means "through to".
Click A1 again, type a word and press Enter. The text lands in the active cell and the highlight moves down one cell.

You can also click the grey letter at the top of a column to select the whole column, or the grey number at the left of a row to select the whole row. Why it matters: Formulas, charts and sorting all refer to cells and ranges by address. If you can read an address quickly, everything later in the course feels natural. Common mistake: Reading the address backwards. The column letter always comes first, so 4C is not a cell; C4 is.

Practice

In a blank workbook, type Item in A1 and Price (R) in B1. Then type Bread in A2 and 18 in B2, Milk in A3 and 24 in B3, and Eggs (tray) in A4 and 69 in B4. Finally, select the range A1:B4. Your finished result is a small two column price list with the whole block highlighted.

K-1-1-practice.xlsx contains a spaza shop stock list with several rows of items and prices, so you can click around and practise reading addresses.

Key takeaways

A workbook is the file, a worksheet is a page inside it, and a cell is one box on that page.
A cell address is the column letter followed by the row number, such as C4.
A range such as A1:B4 is a block of cells, written with a colon.