In this lesson, you will learn how to make changes to entries in an Excel worksheet and undo those changes.
After you have entered data into a cell, you may change it by editing it. In Excel, you can edit cell text in either the formula bar or in the cell itself. To edit an entry, do this:
Excel offers a spell checking feature that rapidly finds and highlights for correction the misspellings in a worksheet. Sometimes Excel won't even attempt to decipher your word, and doesn't give you any suggestions for the word not found in its dictionary. To run the spell checker:
Timesaver Tip: Spell Check You can click the Spelling button in the Standard toolbar to begin the spell checker.
Figure 5.1
Correct spelling mistakes with the Spell options in the Spelling dialog box.
Panic Button: Choose the Wrong Spell Option? If you mistakenly select the wrong Spell option, you can click the Undo Last button in the Spelling dialog box to undo the last option you chose or you can correct the mistake after you exit the spell checker. You can exit Spelling at any time by clicking Cancel in the Spelling dialog box.
Excel's new AutoCorrect feature automatically corrects common typing mistakes as you type. When you press Enter, Excel enters the corrected text in the cell. With AutoCorrect, you can correct two initial capitals. For example, if you type MAine and press Enter, Excel will enter Maine in the cell. AutoCorrect capitalizes the names of days. For example, if you type monday and press Enter, Excel will enter Monday in the cell. You can also replace text as you type. For example, if you always type breif instead of the correct spelling brief, you can add these entries to the AutoCorrect list and AutoCorrect will fix it for you.
To add entries to the AutoCorrect list, do this:
Figure 5.2
Add entries to the AutoCorrect list to correct common typographical errors as you
work.
Timesaver Tip: Shorthand Shortcut You can use AutoCorrect like shorthand. For example, you can replace "Div1" with "Division 1" as you type.
Windows 95: AutoCorrect AutoCorrect is a new feature in Excel for Windows 95.
You can undo almost anything you do in a worksheet, including any change you enter into a cell. To undo a change, do one of the following:
To undo an Undo (reverse a change), take one of these actions:
Panic Button: Undo/Repeat One Act The Undo and Repeat features only undo or repeat the most recent action you took.
With Excel's Find and Replace features, you can locate data and then replace the original data with new data. When you have a label, a value, or formula that is entered incorrectly throughout the worksheet, you can use the Edit Replace command to search and replace all occurrences of the incorrect information with the correct data. To find and replace data, follow these steps:
Figure 5.3
Finding and replacing data with the Replace dialog box.
Panic Button: Replace One At a Time Be sure that you want to replace all occurrences before you select the Replace All button. You can also search for and replace once occurrence at a time. To do this, click the Find Next button to find the next occurrence of the data. Then click the Replace button if you want to replace the data or click the Find Next button again to skip the occurrence and find the next occurrence.
Cell notes can provide detailed information about data used in a worksheet. For example, you can create a cell note to help remind you of the purpose behind formulas or of the information that you are supposed to enter in various locations within the worksheet. Once you create a note, you can display the note you've added to the cell(s). The cell note that displays on the worksheet is called a CellTip. To add a note to a cell, do the following:
To view a CellTip, point to a cell that contains a red dot in its upper right
corner. Excel displays the CellTip on the worksheet, as shown in Figure 5.5.
Figure 5.4
Adding a cell note in the Cell Note dialog box.
Figure 5.5
Viewing a CellTip in a worksheet.
Windows 95: CellTips Excel's new CellTips feature allows you to display a cell note on the worksheet by simply moving the mouse pointer to the red dot in a cell. In Excel 5, you displayed a cell's note by using the Options Workspace command and choosing the Info Window option.
To edit a note, select the cell that contains the note, and choose Insert Note. In the Note dialog box, click on the note name in the Notes in Sheet list, and make your changes in the Text Note box.
To delete a note, click on the note name in the Notes in Sheet list, and click Delete.
In this lesson, you learned how to edit cell data, undo changes, and add notes to cells. In the next lesson, you will learn how to work with workbook files.
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