10 Minute Guide to Excel for Windows 95

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- 5 -
Editing Entries

In this lesson, you will learn how to make changes to entries in an Excel worksheet and undo those changes.

Editing Data

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:

1. Select the cell in which you want to edit data.

2. Position the insertion point in the formula bar with the mouse, or press F2, or double-click on the cell. This puts you in Edit mode; Edit appears in the status bar.

3. Press <- or -> to move the insertion point. Use the Backspace key to delete characters to the left, or the Delete key to delete characters to the right. Then type any characters you want to add.

4. Click on the Enter button on the formula bar, or press Enter to accept your changes.

Checking Your Spelling

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:

1. Open the Tools menu and select Spelling. Excel finds the first misspelled word and displays the word at the top of the Spelling dialog box. Excel's estimate of the correct word appears in the Change To box and in the suggestions list. See Figure 5.1.

2. If a suggestion is correct, click on the word in the Suggestions list, (if necessary), and then click Change to change the misspelled word. Or click Change All to change all occurrences of the misspelled word. If desired, you can click Add to add the word to the custom dictionary.

3. If a suggestion is wrong, you can do any of the following:

4. When the spell checker doesn't find any more misspelled words, it displays a prompt telling you that spell check is complete. Click OK to confirm that spell checking is complete.


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.

Using AutoCorrect

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:

1. Open the Tools menu and select AutoCorrect. The AutoCorrect dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 5.2.

2. If you want to turn off an AutoCorrect option, click a check box next to the option. The check mark is removed from the check box, indicating the option is turned off.

3. To add an entry to the AutoCorrect list, type the text you want to replace in the Replace text box. Press Tab to move the insertion point to the With text box. Type the replacement text in the With text box.

4. Click the Add button. This will add the entry to the AutoCorrect list.

5. If you want to delete an entry from the AutoCorrect list, use the scroll bar to move to the entry in the list that you want to delete. Click on the entry you want to delete. Then click the Delete button.


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.

Undoing an Action

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.

Finding and Replacing Data

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:

1. Select the cells that contain the data you want to search. (See Lesson 10 for more information on selecting cells.)

2. Open the Edit menu and select Replace. The Replace dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 5.3.

3. Type the text you want to find and replace in the Find What text box.

4. Click in the Replace With text box or press the Tab key. Type the text you want to use as the replacement in the Replace With text box.

5. Click the Replace All button to begin the search and replace all occurrences of the data you specified. When Excel finishes replacing all occurrences, click outside the selected cells to deselect them.


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.

Adding Notes to Cells

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:

1. Select the cell to which you want to add a note.

2. Open the Insert menu nd choose Note. The Cell Note dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 5.4.

3. Type the note in the space provided under Text Note.

4. Click OK to add the note to the cell.

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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