An Introduction to Microsoft Excel - Part 2

Many users believe that Excel is simply for holding data, and by data I mean numbers. But Excel can manipulate text just as easily. You can create letters in Excel that will look exactly as if they had been created in Word. Let’s look at some basic features that Excel offers when working with text.

One of the most useful is called AutoComplete. When you start entering text in a cell, Excel will check the contiguous (adjacent to, or having a common boundary) data in the same column to see if the characters match a previous entry. If they do, Excel will complete the remaining text for you. To turn on AutoComplete click on Tools > Options > Edit tab and make sure the entry “Enable AutoComplete for cells values” is checked. Click OK to exit.


You can try this by typing some data in a few cells, then start typing the same data again. As soon as you enter a character that matches the first character of an existing entry Excel will offer to complete it for you. To accept Excel’s suggestion, press the Enter button. In this example, as soon as I typed the letter “E” in cell A3, Excel offered to complete the entry, based on the data in previous cells.


If you decide you don’t want to use Excel’s suggestion, just type another letter and the AutoComplete highlight will disappear.


You can select a range of cells to make entering text more efficient. For example, select the range of cells A1 to C4. Now begin entering your text. When you have entered data in cell A4, by pressing Enter cell B1 will be automatically highlighted. This is more efficient than using the mouse to select the next required cell.

Wrapping text allows you to display your data over more than just one line. In this example, the text “spills over” into the cells next to A1.


To wrap text, enter your data and then press Ctrl+1. From the dialogue box choose the Alignment tab. Now check the Wrap text box and click OK..


The text will now appear over multiple lines in the cell.


You can, of course, do this manually. Place the cursor in the text in the Formula Bar. Now press Alt+Enter, then press Enter to exit the cell. This has the effect of adding a carriage return to the cell.

Perhaps you need to edit only those cells containing text. You can select only these cells by the following method. Look at this example:

Now press F5 and from the dialogue box click on Special. Select Constants and ensure only Text is checked.


Now press OK. The result? Only cells with text have been highlighted.



To conclude this part of the introduction, I would like to tell you about some limitations within Excel. By limitations I mean some practical limits, for example:

• The maximum number of characters allowed for one cell is 32,767. Note that only 1024 will be visible in the cell, however all 32,767 will show in the Formula Bar.
• The number of sheets in a workbook is only limited by the available memory. I have heard of examples with 250 sheets.
• The maximum row height available is 409 points.
• The zoom range is 10% to 400%.

There are may more that affect formulae, charts, pivot tables etc but it is unlikely that the average user will ever breach those limits.