on the right into view, you swipe right-to-left. To scroll new worksheet rows from below into view, swipe up, bottom to top. The force with which you slide determines how many columns or rows you scroll through. To return previously displayed columns or rows into view, simply slide in the opposite direction: left to right to scroll columns left and downward to scroll rows up.
Each new workbook you open in Excel 2016 contains a single blank worksheet with 16,384 columns and 1,048,576 rows (giving you a truly staggering 17,179,869,184 blank cells!). But, that’s not all. If ever you need more worksheets in your workbook, you can add them simply by clicking the New Sheet button (indicated by the plus sign in a circle) that appears to the immediate right of the last visible tab (see callout in Figure 1-8) or by selecting Shift+F11.
FIGURE 1-8: The Sheet Tab scroll buttons, sheet tabs, Next sheet, Previous sheet, and New Sheet buttons enable you to activate your worksheets and add to them.
ONE REASON FOR ADDING EXTRA SHEETS TO A WORKBOOK
You may wonder why anyone would ever need more than a single worksheet given just how many cells it already contains. The truth is that it’s all about how you choose to structure a particular spreadsheet rather than running out of places to put the data. For example, suppose that you need to create a workbook that contains budgets for all the various departments in your corporation. You may decide to devote an individual worksheet to each department (with the actual budget spreadsheet tables laid out in the same manner on each sheet) rather than placing all the tables in different sections of the same sheet. Using this kind of one-sheet-per-budget layout makes it much easier for you to find each budget, print each one as a separate page of a report, and, if ever necessary, to consolidate the data in a separate summary worksheet.
On the left side of the bottom of the Worksheet area, the Sheet Tab scroll buttons appear followed by the actual tabs for the worksheets in your workbook and the New Sheet button. To activate a worksheet for editing, you select it by clicking its sheet tab. Excel lets you know what sheet is active by displaying the sheet name in boldface type and underlining it to make its tab appear connected to the current sheet.
If your workbook contains too many sheets for all the tabs to be displayed at the bottom of the Worksheet area, use the Sheet Tab scroll buttons to bring new tabs into view (so that you can then click them to activate them). You click the Next Sheet button (the ellipsis or three periods to the left of the first visible sheet) to scroll the next hidden sheet tab into view or the Last Sheet button (the ellipsis or three periods to the left of the last visible sheet) to scroll the last group of completely or partially hidden tabs into view.
To scroll the very first worksheet in the workbook into view, you can hold down Ctrl as you click the left-pointing Sheet Tab scroll button. To scroll the last sheet into view, you Ctrl+click the right-pointing scroll button.
To display the Activate dialog box that lists all the sheets in the workbook from first to last, right-click either one of the Sheet Tab scroll buttons. You can then scroll into view and click any of the sheets in the workbook simply by clicking its name in the Activate dialog followed by clicking OK.
The Status bar is the last component at the very bottom of the Excel program window (see Figure 1-9). The Status bar contains the following:
❯❯ Mode indicator on the left that shows the current state of the Excel program (Ready, Edit, and so on) as well as any special keys that are engaged (Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock).
❯❯ AutoCalculate indicator that displays the average and sum of all the numerical entries in the current cell selection along with the count of every cell in the selection.
❯❯ Layout selector that enables you to select between three layouts for the Worksheet area: Normal, the default view that shows only the worksheet cells with the column and row headings; Page Layout View that adds rulers, page margins, and shows page breaks for the worksheet; and Page Break Preview that enables you to adjust the paging of a report. (See Chapter 5 for details.)
❯❯ Zoom slider that enables you to zoom in and out on the cells in the Worksheet area by dragging the slider to the right or left, respectively.
FIGURE 1-9: The Status bar displays the program’s current standing and enables you to select new worksheet views.
Launching and Quitting Excel
Excel 2016 runs only under Windows 7, 8, and, of course, the new Windows 10 operating system. This means that if your PC is running the old Vista or XP versions of Windows, you must upgrade before you can successfully install and run Excel 2016. Because of the significant changes made to the user interface in Windows 8 and 10, the procedure for starting Excel 2016 on these versions of the operating system is quite a bit different from Windows 7.
Windows 10 brings back the good old Start menu that many of you remember from much earlier Windows versions. The Windows 10 Start menu combines the straight menu from earlier days with the tile icons so prominent in Windows 8. To open this menu to launch Excel 2106, click the Windows icon on the taskbar or press the Windows key on your keyboard.
Then,
