Welcome to the course. This is a no-experience-required online training course, suitable for anyone who wants to learn about Microsoft Excel 2007 starting with the basics. In these four simple, free tutorials, you'll get plenty of training and tips on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and pick up some insider techniques not easily found through Microsoft Excel support channels.

This introductory course is one in a series of free online courses designed to help you learn Excel -- from the basics through advanced levels.

What you'll learn

This course consists of four lessons, each one with a simple quiz and an assignment. The lessons are:

• In Lesson 1, "Introduction to Excel 2007," you'll become acquainted with Excel 2007 by taking a tour of its interface and learning Microsoft Excel terms. You'll get practice opening a saved file, entering and editing data, and printing.
• Lesson 2, "Creating Your First Worksheet," teaches you how to start a new workbook; move around in a worksheet; select, move, and copy data; and insert rows and columns.
• In Lesson 3, "Formula and Function Basics," you'll discover the power of Microsoft Excel formulas and functions and learn how to use them to calculate and summarize numeric data.
• Lesson 4, "Formatting Basics," shows you how to format the text and numbers in a worksheet and find out how to apply borders and shading to cells. You'll also learn how to set page formatting and printing options.

Quizzes and assignments are for your learning experience only. Quizzes are computer-graded, and you may retake a quiz as many times as you like. Assignments are optional; however, working through the assignments enhances your learning experience and helps solidify key concepts and techniques for using Microsoft Excel 2007.

Throughout this course, we provide Flash examples. To view these examples, you need the Adobe Flash Player. Keep an eye out for notes with links that say "See how to ___" or something similar. Some of these files are very large (2 to 5 MB or so) and may take a while to appear or download if you have a slow connection.

Lesson 1 overview

This first lesson eases you into Excel 2007 by explaining what Excel is and what it's good for. You'll find out what's changed since Excel 2003 and learn how to handle files and do some basic editing. Even if you've never opened Excel before, you'll get up to speed quickly and be ready to tackle creating your own worksheets in the next lesson. Let's get started.