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Excel Tutorial for Beginners

This Excel tutorial for beginners takes you from an empty sheet to a small budget with formulas, formatting and a chart. It takes about 20 minutes. Open Excel next to this page and follow along: you learn Excel by doing, not by reading.

Excel CSE · 4 min read

1. The Excel screen

• Cells: the boxes. Each has an address made of a column letter and a row number: B3 is column B, row 3.
• Range: a block of cells, written as A1:C5 (from A1 to C5).
• Ribbon: the tabs at the top (Home, Insert, Data…) with all commands.
• Formula bar: above the cells, shows what's really in the selected cell.
• Sheets: the tabs at the bottom. A file (workbook) can have many sheets.

2. Enter data

Click A1, type Item and press Tab to go right. Type Amount and press Enter. Fill in this list:

Numbers line up on the right, text on the left. If a number sits on the left, Excel sees it as text. To fix a typo, click the cell and type over it, or press F2 to edit.

3. Your first formula

Every formula starts with =. Click B6 and type:

Press Enter: 1,495. Change the rent to 1,000 and the total updates by itself. That's the point of Excel: you calculate with cell addresses, not with the numbers themselves.

Shortcut: select B6 and press Alt+= for an instant SUM. A few more to try in empty cells:

More in the guides to SUM and AVERAGE.

4. AutoFill and copying formulas

Add a column C with the heading Share. In C2 type =B2/$B$6. Now grab the small square at the bottom right of C2 (the fill handle) and drag it down to C5, or double-click it.

Excel copies the formula and adjusts it: C3 becomes =B3/$B$6. The $ signs keep B6 fixed. This is the most important idea in Excel formulas: see absolute references.

AutoFill also continues patterns: type Jan in a cell and drag to get Feb, Mar, Apr. Type 1 and 2, select both and drag for 3, 4, 5…

5. Make it look good

• Select C2:C5 and press Ctrl+Shift+% to show percentages (64%, 27%, 8%, 2%).
• Select B2:B6 and choose a currency in Home › Number Format.
• Make the headers bold with Ctrl+B.
• Double-click the line between two column letters to fit the column width.
• Or select the data and press Ctrl+T for an instant table with colours and filters.

6. Sort and filter

Click a cell in the Amount column and choose Data › Sort Largest to Smallest. Excel keeps each row together. With Data › Filter you get drop-down arrows in the headers to show only certain rows. See sort and filter.

7. Make a chart

Select A1:B5 and choose Insert › Pie Chart or press Alt+F1 for a column chart. Click the chart title to rename it. More in how to make a chart.

8. Save and print

Press Ctrl+S. Excel files end in .xlsx. Save as CSV only when another program asks for it: CSV keeps the values but loses formulas, formatting and extra sheets. To print, press Ctrl+P and choose Fit Sheet on One Page under Scaling.

What to learn next

1. IF: let a formula make decisions.
2. COUNTIF and SUMIF: count and add with conditions.
3. VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP: look up data in another table.
4. Pivot tables: summarise thousands of rows in seconds.
5. Keyboard shortcuts: work twice as fast.

Keep the Excel formulas cheat sheet open as a reference.