Introduction of Spread Sheet

Introduction - Spread Sheet

A spreadsheet software can also store, manipulate and create graphical representations of data.

User can enter data into a spreadsheet, do the formatting, calculate and analyse the data for decision making. Besides user's data, spreadsheet packages also provide built-in formulae and functions for common mathematical, financial, statistical, and logical operations in a very sophisticated manner. Spreadsheet packages are widely used for data analysis and accounting applications. Because of these abilities the spreadsheet packages are used as a universal programme for structured data preparation and processing.

Title bar: The Title bar, located at the top, shows the name of the current spreadsheet. When the spreadsheet is newly created, its name is Untitled X, where X is a number. The first created spreadsheet takes the name as Untitled 1, second is Untitled 2 and so on.

Menu bar: Menu bar is located just below the Title bar. It contains the menus with commands for various tasks. Each menu item has a submenu called pull-down menu. The various menu items are briefly explained below.

Toolbars: The Calc opens with the Standard and Formatting toolbars at the top of the workspace by default. These toolbar provide a wide range of common commands and functions. Placing the mouse cursor over any icon displays a small box called a tooltip. It gives a brief explanation of the icon function.

Name box: shows the cell reference, for example A1.

Functions wizard: search the function from the list of available functions.

Worksheet: The worksheet in Calc is also referred to as spreadsheet. The spreadsheet can have many sheets. Each sheet can have many individual cells arranged in rows and columns. The sheet tab shows its default name as Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3, ….

Rows and columns: The sheet is divided into vertical columns and horizontal rows. Each sheet can have a maximum of 1,048,576 (220) rows and 1024 (210) columns. The rows are numbered as 1,2,3,4,… and columns are numbered as A, B, C, D, …., Z, AA, AB, AC, …., AZ, BA to BZ, CA,…., AMJ.

Cell and cell address: The intersection of a row and column is called a cell. It is the basic element of a spreadsheet. It holds data, such as text, numbers, formulas and so on. A cell address is denoted by its column (letter) and row number. For example, D4, E9, Z89 are the valid example of cell address.