Some basic commands that are useful in using Microsoft Excel are sorting, using filters and calculations. What these allow you to do is sift through the jobs or customers you want out of the whole lot. You could filter all the jobs based on a storm event, or you could check the basic performance of your employees based on the number of jobs perhaps completed. It is not as powerful or efficient as a database but it still can be quite powerful. There are tutorials that explain many functions of a Microsoft spreadsheet program. Here is one directly from Microsoft

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/excel-help/training-courses-for-excel-2013-HA104032083.aspx

Formats and Data

The following is a labelled diagram of the various components of the Excel screen – take note of the cell, the formula bar and the various toolbars. All of the entries including types characters, numbers and formulas show in the Formula bar showing up whatever cell the cursor. The cursor is on A1 on the diagram.

Cells and what is contained in them can be formatted – in other words changed to different formats and alignment. You can see the format command and the corresponding window already opened. In this example, the cell was formatted to show currency in dollars. Alignment eg centering of cells can be done and fonts changed in this section. Sensitive information can be protected from being deleted using protection.

Calculations

The most basic calculations that require to be done on Microsoft Excel are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as percentages. Microsoft Excel is made up of a series of cells which can contain numbers, letters or dates. Numbers can be in the form of currency so you can see already the usefulness of spreadsheets in terms of PDR. Calculations are carried out using formulas. In the diagram, you can see the formula

=SUM(C4:J4). This formula adds the cells C4 to J4 and places the total in cell K4 which is where the formula was entered.

In order to create the formula in cell N11 which adds values in the cells dow to N10, we can select the cells and press the blue sigma button on the toolbar and it automatically crates the formula in N11.

GST (Goods and Services Tax) calculations are also useful and is displayed below. Please note that the total is in brackets and multiplied by 0.1 (same as 10%).

Other examples of formulas are

   
If you do not wish the formula to change when moved but you are simply trying to keep it out of the way of the main spreadsheet as it may not be that important, then absolute referencing is used. This will not be discussed here in detail except for one simple example.Formulas can be copied and moved around in Microsoft Excel. However, you need to be aware that the formulas above are relative which means that if you copy the formula, the letters or numbers (column or row references) will change accordingly based on how many cells and rows you have copied it too. For instance, if you copied the formula  =SUM(C4:J4) down 1 cell, then the formula will now become =SUM(C5:J5) because it tries to do the same calculation on the next row. This is an advantage because you can quickly replicate the same formula to do the same repeated calculations very quickly to multiple cells.

The following three diagrams indicate how an absolute reference for the cell N11 was created/edited in the formula bar and it was moved to another cell (remember the original formula was  =SUM(C4:J4) ). By changing the formula to   =SUM($C$4:$J$4)  the value and calculation and associated total remains the same when in cell Q9. The $ symbol before each letter and number in the formula forces both to be absolute ie they do not change no matter where you copy the the formula. This feature is used usually when you require something to remain the same and accessed for other calculations but this formula or value is not important for the final outcome and moved out of the way to the side.