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Paste
Function
There are a number of formulas built
into Excel, like Sum. These formulas are called
Functions. Below the Menu Bar (see right) you will
see a “sigma” ∑
with a small
down triangle to the right of the sigma (see arrow
on the diagram to the right).
Click on the down triangle. The drop down menu
that you see on the right will appear. Move down to More Functions
and click-on More Functions.
 
Two menu screens will now appear at
the same time. An “Office Assistant” will appear (see
image above on left) and you can ask it
questions (the little assistant may be a paper clip or just about
anything). The Insert Function menu screen will also appear
(like the one above on the right). The two menu screens
work together to assist you when you are using functions.
Let’s work with the Insert Function menu screen.
Click-on the small down triangle to the right of
Or select a category (see arrow at left).
 In
the drop down menu that appears you can see that there are all kinds
of formulas (functions) that come with Excel spreadsheet (e.g.
statistical, mathematical, financial, etc.). Instead of haveing to go
to math, financial, or statistical tables in a book, you can enter
data from your spreadsheet into the formulas and receive answers.
Click-on All in the drop down
menu.
The Select a function menu will look like
the image below.
Look at all the functions (formulas)! We’ll just
go through how to use the addition formula (SUM) in this tutorial. If
you need these formulas in the future, you’ll know they’re here.
Use the elevator bar on the right side of the
Select a function menu screen to move down the list until you
see SUM. Click-on SUM.
Then click-on OK.
When you click-on OK, the
Function Arguments menu screen (above) will appear.
If you look at the top of the screen in the SUM area,
you’ll see that Excel XP has “guessed” that you desire
to add the numbers above cell C9 – where you clicked in
your spreadsheet. Smart Excel! Notice that it indicates that
cells C6:C8 will be added (sum cells C6 through C8 – the colon
(:) means “through.” It also indicates the numbers in cells C6, C7
and C8 and give you the sum (= 700).
But it’s a little unclear how Excel did this.
The Help in Excel Functions is excellent. So, to see how this SUM
equation works, we’ll go to Help. To do this, click-on
Help on this function in the
lower left corner of the screen (see left arrow above).
You will now see a Microsoft Excel
Help window appear (similar to the one above) that
will show you how to use this SUM function (or any
function). One of the really neat things about these Help
windows is that there are examples for each function. We
moved down the SUM help screen using the elevator
bar on the right of the help screen. The bottom
of the screen looks like the image at the top of the
next page. Spend a few minutes looking at the SUM Help window
and notice all of the features.
 The
bottom of the SUM help screen looks like the
image on the left. Notice that it gives you
examples from a small spreadsheet that has data in cells A1
through A6. It uses these numbers to in the examples at the bottom of
the help screen.
When you have reviewed all of the help you care
to see, carefully click-on the X at the upper right
corner of the Microsoft Excel Help blue bar to
close the Microsoft Excel Help window If you
accidentally close the spreadsheet, simply reply yes to Save, and then
re-open the spreadsheet as you did on page 11.
The Function Arguments menu screen will
still be on the screen.
If the Office Assistant is still on the
screen simply point to it and click the
RIGHT mouse button. A pop-up
menu will appear. Click-on Hide. This will put the
Assistant away until we need it again
As you can see, in the area to the right of Number 1, the
“Wizard” has “guessed” that you want to add the numbers in the
range C6 to C8. Now that you are becoming proficient with
Excel, we’ll try something special. Carefully, point to
some “plain part,” in the gray area above. Click and
hold down the left mouse button, and drag the above
SUM box “away” so that you can see your
numbers in C column cells. When you have done this,
release the mouse button. Now click-on the “small box”
on the right edge of the Number 1 area (see arrow above).
It has a little red arrow in it.
The below window will appear.
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