Locally, Human Resource Management alone does the job of monitoring overtime, leave and change shift. This setting is indeed a false one. Most of the companies in the Philippines are owned by the Japanese and the American. Certainly, Filipinos encompass ¾'s of the population. Unfortunately, it is proven that most of the Filipinos relate themselves to common local connotation that is “Mamaya Na!”

Likewise, Ibiden Philippines, Inc. monitors overtime, leave and change shift through HR Department. Other departments just like QA monitors overtime, leave and change shift but not as serious as HR's monitoring. Some departments even rely with HR's update by the end of the month. Sadly, there was a delay in HR updates.

Hence, Automated OT, Leave & Change Shift Monitoring® was developed to alleviate the scenario.

Productivity

In the first place, IPI employees are unconscious of their productivity since there was no monitoring at all. This allows them to work without direction in the sense that they will just work in manner of just working.

Quality

Some departments have monitoring of overtime, leave and change shift. However, their monitoring is manual. Manual monitoring is susceptible to human errors. Thus, the quality and accuracy of computation is being sacrificed.

Cost

Since there was no monitoring of overtime, employees can render overtime on the basis of their “wants” not on the “needs of the company” for their service. This fact incurs cost.

Morale

No recognition is given to employees who were not able to file leave and change shifts per month. This hampers appreciation and employee satisfaction.

The tabs are those items that distinguish worksheets within Excel. If you are not sure what a worksheet is then this article will more than likely be more advanced than what you need right now. I recommend checking out some sites on the basics of Excel before continuing.

Being able to color code your worksheet tabs can help you further organize your entire workbook making it easier to find information when you need it most. The steps are very simple.

You can do it a couple of ways. The first way which is what I find to be the easiest is to right click with your mouse on the tab that you want to change the color of. This will bring up what is called a pop up menu. In the pop up menu that is an option called “Tab Color”. You'll never guess what that is for? Ok maybe you will.

Click on the sub menu item labeled “Tab Color”. This brings up a color palette where you can choose the color that you want. Select the color that you desire and then finally click the ok button.

At first glance it looks as if nothing has happened. However if you click off of that worksheet by left clicking a different tab, you will then see your new tab color. Just remember that a white tab always represents the active tab that you are working on.

The second way to change the tab color has a couple of more steps but the end result will still be the same. This is very typical of any Microsoft product which is the ability to do one thing in a variety of ways.

Up at the top of the Excel window you will see the main menu header. Click the header menu item that is labeled, “Format”. When you do this a sub menu appears. You will see an item in the sub menu labeled “Sheet”. Click that sub menu item. That brings up yet another sub menu. You will notice in this third menu an option that is labeled “Tab Color”. When you click on this third menu item it will bring up the color palette as it did in the previous example. Everything hereafter is identical.

You can see that the second approach adds a couple more steps but the end result is still the same. Which way you do it is completely up to you.

If you are unfamiliar with how this is done, read on and take a look at the steps I perform to achieve this task. You will see that it is very easy to do.

The first thing you want to do, obviously, is open up Excel. Once Excel is displayed on your screen, go ahead and type in cell “A1” the month name “January”. In the cell “B1” type in the month name, “February”, in “C1” type in “March” and so on until you type in all twelve months each in their own cell on the spreadsheet.

Now that we have some test dummy data on our spreadsheet we can go ahead and reformat the column widths. You can add more data if you would like or even use an already existing spreadsheet. The choice is completely up to you; however the steps to reformat the column widths are all the same as you will soon see.

The next step is to highlight the columns that you want to reformat. To reformat the columns we are using in our example, using the month names, you need to click on the column header labeled “A”. Now hold down the “shift” key and click the column header labeled “L”. In other words you are clicking the first column and the last column. If you chose to use your own spreadsheet, your columns that you use may be different. You could also click on column header “A” and holding down the left mouse button, drag the cursor over top of the final column, in this case “L”, and let go of the mouse button. Either way is fine.

Now that the columns you want reformatted to a different size have been chosen, it is time to do just that. Using your computer's mouse, right click anywhere within the highlighted area. This will bring up a pop-up menu. On that menu is the option “column width”. Click on that option. This will bring up a window asking you to enter in the width of the columns. If there is a number already in that box you will need to erase that first by highlighting it and pressing your “delete” key. Now type in the number “12” and click the “Ok” button.

You should now see that all of the highlighted columns have changed to the size of 12. Repeat the steps above to alter the sizes and find one that looks more visually appealing for the spreadsheet that you are working on.

Remember that at anytime you can undo what you just did by clicking the “Edit” menu option at the top of the screen and click the sub-menu option of “undo”.

Go ahead and open up Excel. You should be staring at a blank worksheet. The first thing we need to do is enter some data into a column. For our purposes we will use column “A” to enter our data. In rows one through ten go ahead and type some numbers in. It doesn't matter what they as long as they are not in numerical order.

You can enter in as many numbers as you would like and as large as you like it all depends on how much typing you want to do.

No click on the column header labeled “A”. You will notice that this highlights the entire column. This signifies that we will be working with all of the data in column “A”.

There are two ways you can sort the data automatically and both are correct and exactly the same. You will see at the top of the spreadsheet some menu options. They are “File”, “Edit”, “View”, “Insert” and so on. Look for the “Data” menu option and click it. Clicking the “Data” menu option will bring up a sub menu. On the sub menu option labeled “Sort”. This will bring up a window asking you for specific sorting options. The window already has the defaults set that we want so go ahead and click the “Ok” button.

The data in your column that was highlighted should now be sorted in an ascending manner or in others one through ten as opposed to descending which would be ten through one.

The second method to sorting the data would be to just click the sort button located on the toolbar. There are two sort buttons. One is displayed as the letter “A” sitting over top the letter “Z” with a down arrow, meaning to sort the data in an ascending manner and the second button is the letter “Z” sitting over top the letter “A” with a down arrow, meaning to sort the data in a descending manner.

You need to reset your data so that it is jumbled up again like it was before. To do this click on the “Edit” menu bar option then click on “Undo Sort”. You will see this unsorts the data.

Now go ahead and highlight the column of data just the same way as you did before. Click on either sort button described earlier and you will see that your data is now sorted. You will also notice that you did not get that window of options this time. By using the sort buttons you are telling Excel that you are ok with the defaults they have chosen.

So there you have it, sorting data in Microsoft Excel in its most basic explanation and definition. If you want to try more complicated data to see how it works, add in additional columns of data.

Here are the steps to achieve this process:

Type in a year in cell A1, then on row 2 type the months January through May in each of their own cells. For example, January would go in A2, February would go in B2, March in C2 and so on.

The next step you want to do is click on cell A1 where your year is, then holding down the shift key, click on the cell E1. This will highlight the cells we want to merge. You can highlight as many cell as you want, however we are choosing A1 through E1 for this example.

You then want to make sure you can see the formatting toolbar. This is important because on this toolbar is the merge button we will need to press in order to merge the cells.

To view this toolbar, click the “view” menu option located at the top of the screen, on the sub-menu item that appears click on “toolbars”. On the next sub-menu appears if there is no check mark next to “formatting”, then click the word “formatting”. This will display the formatting toolbar. If there is a check next to it, then you are already displaying this particular toolbar.

Now that you have your formatting toolbar displayed, look for the button that looks like a lower case “a” with arrows on each side of it. On the formatting toolbar it usually is located between the right justified button and the dollar sign button.

The cells that you highlighted earlier should still be highlighted. If they are not go back and repeat that step. If they are go ahead and click the merge button. You will see that the highlighted cells have now merged into one large cell and have centered the data, in this case the year.

You now know how to merge cells in rows. You can also merge column cells. This is done the same exact way as rows, except you do it vertically as opposed to horizontally.

1971 -- My First Contact

 

My first contact with a computer was in 1971 at Camp Lejeune, N.C. I was on the general's staff in the CEO's office (Communication Electronics Officer) for the Second Marine Division. One of my duties was as the Division Frequency Coordinator. We had over 4,600 frequencies assigned to the division. The man before me controlled them with a 3-ring binder. Each page had the frequencies typed down the left side and each sheet was inside a plastic protector. Permanent assignments were typed in to the right and others, assigned for specific operation and only used for a short time period, had a grease pencil notation to the right.

The old control system, without a computer, worked like this. The Comm Chief of Second Marines, calls me and asks for a range safety frequency for two days. I pull out my logbook, find a VHF freq with no other assignments nearby, and tell him, "Okay, use kilo one seven." That code was an unclassified reference number so that I could talk to someone on the phone and give them a freq. He says okay, and I make a notation in the logbook with my grease pencil. Two days later he calls and says he's done with it so I open the logbook, (HIGH TECH HERE, pay attention and let me know if you can't follow the technical details) I pull out a Kleenex, spit on it, and erase the entry -- I'm done.
One of my first jobs was to automate that procedure and bring it up the level of available technology.

We had big coding sheets about 18" x 14" with 80 columns on them. There were, I think, either 30 or 45 lines to the page. Each line of 80 boxes represented one punch card and each card represented one frequency. For each of the 4,600 or so freqs I had to write a separate card and, if there was no assignment, I'd just put in the code, the freq, and the type. For an assignment I'd put in an abbreviation such as, 2/2 TAC LOG, which meant the tactical logistics net for Second Battalion, Second Marine Regiment. Each morning I'd take ten or fifteen coding sheets to the Data Processing Center. In the afternoon I'd return and pick up my cards and a printout of the data. Note, nothing was actually going into the computer. They were just punching cards, feeding them into a card reader, and getting a printout.

When you got your cards the data that was encoded was printed across the top of the card. Something would occasionally happen to the ribbon and you'd get a card with punched holes but nothing printed and it became important to be able to read the holes. Actually, if you worked with the cards very long you could read the punches quite easily.
The DP center was a long low building about thirty by a hundred feet. In those days (and even into the early 90s) all computer centers were in buildings with ENORMOUS A/C units and raised floors. The purpose of that was that all the cables ran under the floor and, by pulling up a floor tile, you could crawl under the floor to work on the cables. (Something that happened frequently.) You entered the building at one end and there was a counter across the front. On the counter was an in-box. Any work you had you dropped in there and you went away. They didn't want to talk to you.

My problem was that everything I did was classified. All the freqs were CONFIDENTIAL and, when we were preparing for any kind of deployment, the frequency assignments were SECRET. There was no guard anywhere, just the unlocked front door, the in-box, and a bunch of guys behind the counter. At that time, I had just returned from embassy duty and security was in my blood. I always thought about the idea that anyone could walk in, paw through the in-box, and pull out some SECRET material. If he was stopped, all he had to say was something like, "Oh, I made a mistake on this input. I have to make some changes." That always did bother me. (An exception was TOP SECRET. If you had any TS you'd stand there and wave the bright red folder until someone came over and took it from you. Naturally there was a chain of custody on TS and ... I hoped and prayed that the clerks had a TS clearance.)

Behind the counter were five or six card punch machines, each with an operator typing away madly. Behind them was the computer equipment. Down the left and right walls were a number of tape drives. Each drive unit was close to six feet tall, three feet wide, and about two feet deep. Mounted on the top front were two reels containing magnetic tape, about one inch wide. Each reel had about the same storage capacity as a modern CD ROM. These are the things you see in "old" movies. The tape spins, stops, spins, reverses, stops, etc. In those days there were no hard drives and all data was stored on tape. The internal memory was reserved for operational programs and any calculations being made.
Across the back of the room was the control panel. Hundreds of lights, switches, patch panels, along with three workstations.

Each workstation had a console with a screen about nine inches square and a keyboard in front of it. Down the middle of the room was a double row of big boxes. Each unit was about three feet square and four feet high. Those boxes constituted the CPU (Central Processing Unit). Consider, inside your home PC is a chip about 1-1/2 inches square and no thicker than 1/16." That chip is your CPU and, I'm guessing, has more computing power than four or five of those old time computers. Our system was an IBM 360/40; state of the art at that time.

So, I pick up my cards and printout, go back to the office and proof it. The next morning I take back any corrections as well as the next ten or fifteen sheets. You can only turn in work in the morning and pick it up in the afternoon. Also, the more sheets you give them, the more errors they'll make; that's why we held it down to 10 or 15 sheets each time. As a result of all this modernization, it took nearly a month for me to get a correct printout of all our frequencies and their assignments.

Here, then, is the first reason I hate computers. With the advent of the wonders of computers it works like this. Top calls, I pull out my printout, find and give him K17. I make a note on the printout, then go find the card for that freq. I make a note on the card and write up a coding sheet with the information on it. Because it's after ten I can't take it to DP today. The next morning I take it to DP, wait for the afternoon pickup, and then have an updated printout.

The following day Top calls, says he's done with it, I make a notation on the printout, mark up the card, prepare a coding sheet, and the following morning I take it to DP, that afternoon I pick it up and ... darn! The clerk keyed in the wrong freq. I make a notation on my printout about the error, prepare a coding sheet and the following morning I take the correction back to DP, wait for the afternoon, pick them up, and we're up to date.
Naturally the coding sheets and cards, because they linked frequencies, codes, and assignments, were all classified. That meant they had to be stored in our classified files center and, when I was done with them, I had to make sure they made it into the burn bag.

My boss demanded that our printout be constantly updated. Just my making a pencil notation on it was not enough for him, we had to have a CLEAN printout all the time that showed all the assignments. He was amazed at how we could now track all of our frequency assignments by computer. Never once did he realize that it now took me two or three days to get that CLEAN printout when, in the old days, it took, oh, maybe ten seconds to make or erase entries! Amazing how easy your life is with computers, huh?

1972 -- My Next Experience

My next reason for hating computers is the very next assignment I had. From Camp Lejeune I went to Iwakuni, Japan. I was in group comm for Marine Aircraft Group 12. The Marine Corps was in a transition to try and get computers to do all our work so, in their infinite wisdom, SOMEBODY decided that Max should learn embarkation procedures. I got a two week trip to Okinawa to attend embarkation school and, upon my return I was appointed as the Squadron Embarkation NCO.

In the old days we'd pack a bunch of boxes, keeping track of what went into each one, put them on a pallet, weigh it, and we'd be ready to go to war. Keeping track of what went in was nothing more than standing there with a notepad and writing down equipment and serial numbers.

Compare that with the speed and convenience that computers offered us. First, I had to code all the equipment in the squadron. Every single piece of equipment had to have a separate punch card showing its name, type, serial number, volume, and weight. Equipment was packed into boxes and each box had a serial number so each box had to have its own card showing its serial number, volume, and empty weight. Most of the boxes were stacked on pallets. Each pallet had a serial number so each one had to have a card showing its empty weight and volume in cubic feet. Realistically, in a combat load, we would never put all our radios on one pallet, but for convenience in explaining this, let's pretend that we're going to put six radios in a box, then put twelve such boxes on a pallet. First I had to find the individual cards for each of the radios, then group them together in the boxes into which they're going to be packed. Only then was I ready to sequence my cards.

First, I laid down a unit ID card, then a group card (the group card tells the computer that everything that follows is grouped together), then a pallet card, then a group card, then a box card, then the six radio cards, then an end card (meaning the six radios are being packed in that particular box), then a group card, box card, radios ..... until I had all the boxes packed and stacked on the pallet, then a final end card. For those 72 radios, I would end up putting together 112 cards in a precise order.

To give you an idea of the scope of my task, consider that, to mount out the entire squadron, we needed around two hundred pallets, each with anywhere from four to twelve boxes, each box containing as few as two or as many as forty items. Then we had twelve 2-1/2 ton trucks into which we crammed fifteen or twenty boxes; twelve jeeps with two or three boxes each; ten maintenance vans, each containing literally hundreds of pieces of equipment; and six CONEX boxes. These were metal shipping containers, eight feet on each side and, inside them were, again, literally hundreds of pieces of equipment. You have no idea how many hours (make that more like days) I spent shuffling around cards and building groupings. My desk looked like I was playing the biggest game of solitaire in history.

After the card deck was sequenced I sent it to DP, had them input the data, and give me a printout. Guaranteed there's going to be a mistake somewhere and I'm going to have to correct it and get a new printout. NOW I'm ready to pack the stuff in the boxes, pile the boxes on the pallets, and band them up. Wow, how did we ever manage to accomplish anything before we had computers?

[In a bit of cruel irony just a month after I completed the cards and had the printout ready, our unit was sent back to Vietnam. None of the senior people trusted computers so can you guess how we packed our gear? Yep, we packed the boxes and someone stood there with a tablet writing down the serial number of each piece of equipment. My card deck was never used!]

1978 -- Computers in Combat

In 1977 I was in Comm Co, Headquarters Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, in Okinawa. Our most modern piece of equipment was the AN/TTC-38, a telephone central office manufactured by Sylvania that was supposed to automate our field telephone system. Our biggest problem was getting it running. There was an 8-level paper tape for the main program that was something like fifty feet long. Before you could load that in, you had to boot the system. Across the top of the control console were 32 little switches. Using a reference manual you set them in a sequence of on and off.

Remember your basic computerese. Switch on = 1, switch off = 0; each one or zero is a bit; eight bits make a byte; each byte represents a letter, number, or character. So, each time we set the 32 switches to various positions of on and off and then pushed ENTER we were entering 32 bits of data; four bytes; or four characters. We had to set those stupid switches SIXTEEN times before the system even knew it was a computer. The headache here was that if even one switch was set wrong the system didn't tell you, it just took everything and then refused to start. You just had to set all of them and try it. If it didn't work, you had to go back and start all over. After the system booted, we had to feed in the fifty-foot paper tape that gave it the operating instructions so it could function. Only after that could we feed in the two- or three-hundred foot paper tape that contained all the user data.

If we wanted to add a user during operation there was no direct input to the computer. We sat at a console, typed in the data, and it punched a paper tape. Each customer required about three feet of tape. Then, to get that data into the system we had to pause the system; that meant that anyone picking up their phone didn't get any dial tone, but any calls in progress were not interrupted. It only took about five seconds to feed in the tape, but the new user wasn't in until the system did a restart. It would wait until there were no calls in progress and then restart automatically, which took only a couple minutes. Now you have the long tape and maybe eight or ten of these short ones. If the system crashed and you had to do a reboot: you did the switches, the fifty foot tape, the long tape, then each of the short ones. Whew! When we reached this point we'd have the system punch a new tape with all the customer data, and throw away all the little pieces. By this time the user tape is four hundred feet long and there is no spool for it. We have to wind it on our fingers. Ain't it wonderful how computers make our life easier?

Final Hatred

 

My lasting problem has to do with the software. In the early days of PCs when you bought a computer all you got was a dumb machine. If there was a hard drive DOS was probably (but not always) loaded on it, but nothing else. Anything you wanted, you went out, bought, and loaded it in yourself. When you turned it on it was up and running in less than thirty seconds. Any time you opened a new program, ten to fifteen seconds was all the time that was needed.

Today, no matter what you want to do with your computer, you get five thousand other programs that eat up memory and slow things down. Even with monstrously fast clock speeds, it now takes five to ten minutes for the computer to be up and running. When you open a new program it can still take a couple minutes for it to be ready to go. Even with all the advances in Windows, I still find there are things that it can't do and I revert to my DOS days and do it from the command prompt.
So, that was my world without and with computers. Maybe you can now understand why I hate the stupid things.

Excel AutoCorrect can help you do this.

Goto Tools->Options, select Spelling tab, then click AutoCorrect Options.

Fill in Field “Replace:” with nms, and Field “With:” with New Mexico State University, click OK.

From now on, wherever you want to input New Mexico State University, just type nms, and Excel will automatically fill the cell with New Mexico State University. Isn't it fun?

Spreadsheets have basic database functionality. In order for this to work, however, it must be switched on. Then, you can do some things that you would normally associate with databases.

Open your spreadsheet Household Goods 2

Delete Rows 4 and Rows 10 (the empty rows between your headings and the items, and the items and totals. The contents of the spreadsheet need to be right next to each other in order for this to work).

Click in to the Cell G3 (Total Cost).

Then click on the tools Data menu and choose the Filter option and then AutoFilter (see the example below).

Your spreadsheet should the look like this, with filtering option along row 3, for each of your headings. All of the columns that contain data have now gained a dropdown box.

Click on to the Total Cost dropdown box. You will see a variety of choices available to you.

Choose sort ascending, and the data will start with the smallest total.

Choose sort descending and the data will start with the largest total.

You can also customise your choice, so if you want to see any particular data you can.

We will see data less than £20 first of all.

Click on to the custom option

Change the dialogue box so it corresponds with this on the right.

You should then get just the items that have a total of less than £20

Repeat this for greater than £50

You should then get a list of the items over £50 in price.

To remove the autofilter function - at any time - click on the tools Data menu and choose the Filter option and then AutoFilter (it should have a tick next to it to say it is “on”)

Your spreadsheet should then appear normal.

Save the spreadsheet and Exit

NEXT: More practice with Min, Max, If and the filter function

All the changes can be made from the Print Preview screen.

The Print Preview Screen

Print Preview shows you what your sheet will look like when printed but doesn't actually print it. To get access to this screen click on the toolbar icon or go to File then Print Preview.

If you want to view the Preview screen in a larger size, put the cursor anywhere in the worksheet and click once to zoom in. Alternatively, you can click on the button at the top of the Preview screen. Repeat either of these actions to zoom out again.

Page Setup

Click on the Setup button at the top of the Print Preview screen.

You can use Page Setup to do many things - it is worthwhile exploring some of them yourself. For now we shall concentrate on how to print the worksheet on one page.

Select the Page tab

It is always advisable to try and print the finished spreadsheet on one piece of paper. You can achieve this in one of two ways:

 

NOTE: Neither of these changes is necessary for the present piece of work because it will print comfortably on one page in Portrait orientation.

Printing Gridlines

If Print Preview shows your worksheet without gridlines, change the setting so that the gridlines are printed out. This is how to do it:

• File menu
• Page Setup
• Sheet tab
• Select the Gridlines checkbox so that it shows a tick
• OK

Printing Only a Part of the Spreadsheet

If you only need to print a particular section of your spreadsheet:

• Select the appropriate block of cells
• Go to FILE
• Choose PRINT

• Click on PRINT

Final Printouts

• First print the whole page, making sure that it will fit on one page in PORTRAIT orientation
• Then print out just the section starting at row 25. Again, make sure that this will fit on one page before you send it to the printer.

NEXT: MORE ABOUT CREATING FORMULAS

 

We use formulae to perform a variety of operations, not only calculations. Some of these are special formulae that we call Functions. You will meet some of these as you develop your Excel skills at a higher level.

In this section we shall look at some straightforward formulae for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

As you have seen when calculating the SUM of data in a number of cells, we place a formula in a cell in the same way as text or numbers. It can be a very simple formula, such as adding the contents of 2 or more cells.

First of all, we need some data, so:

• Go to FILE and NEW
• Type in the data as shown here:

Format the spreadsheet as follows:

• The spreadsheet font is 10-point Arial
• Change the title in cell A1 to 12-point Arial Bold and centre it across the columns A to G
• Change the word TOTAL in cell A11 to Bold
• Change all the headings in row 3 to 10-point Arial Bold and centre them in their cells
• Change the data in columns B and C (B5:C9) to 10-point Arial Bold
• Insert a blank column between columns C and D
• Adjust the column widths if necessary

The formatted sheet should look like this:

In this spreadsheet we shall write FORMULAE for four types of calculation (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), using the two sets of numbers in columns B and C.

Addition

The first step is to add together the two numbers in cells B5 and C5 (that is, B5 plus C5) and put the answer in cell E5. To do this:

• Click in cell E5 and type an = sign.

The = sign is your way of telling the computer that what follows in this cell is some kind of calculation. Without the = sign, you are only inputting text or numbers, and the program will not recognise that you want to calculate something.

• Complete the formula in cell E5 so that it looks like this: =B5+C5
• Confirm this formula by pressing the ENTER key
• Click in cell E5 again to see the result of the formula. It should be 14.

What has happened to the formula? It is still there but in cell E5 you can see only the result of the calculation. To see the formula, look up at the Formula Bar (below the Formatting toolbar).

The next step is to add the other pairs of numbers in rows 6 to 9, using a similar formula. You could make a separate formula for each row but - as you saw in section 3.2 - the quicker and better way is to replicate the formula in E5 into the cells E6:E9 using the Fill Handle. Refer back to section 3.2 to remind yourself how to do it.

Subtraction

Column F requires a different formula. This time we must create a formula in cell F5 to calculate the number in cell B5 minus the number in cell C5.

• In cell F5 type: =B5-C5
• Use the fill handle in F5 to replicate the formula into cells F6 to F9

Multiplication

Create a formula in cell G5 to multiply the two numbers in cells B5 and C5.

Note: In Excel we use the symbol * (asterisk) for Multiply.

• In cell G5 type: =B5*C5
• Replicate the formula into cells G6 to G9

Division

Create a formula in cell H5 to divide the number in cell B5 by the number in cell C5.

Note: In Excel we use the symbol / (forward slash) for Divide.

• In cell H5 type: =B5/C5
• Replicate the formula into cells H6 to H9

At this point your spreadsheet should look just like this one:

Calculating Totals Using the SUM function

Look back at sections 3.1 to 3.3 to remind yourself how to use the SUM function. Then complete your spreadsheet by doing the following:

• Use Autosum in cell E11 to calculate the total for cells E5:E9
• Replicate this formula into cells F11:H11
• Format all the numbers in column H to 2 decimal places

Here is the finished spreadsheet:

• Save the spreadsheet with the name FORMULAE.XLS.
• Print a copy of the spreadsheet and show it to your tutor
• Go to FILE and CLOSE

Next: more new practice and advanced formulas.