What is Excel and how do I use it?

Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that can be used for storing, organizing and manipulating data.
When you start Excel you see a page with 'cells'. Each cell can be identified by a column and a row number. The normal view is where you see the columns with A, B, C, etc as headers and the rows are numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4. You can also have the view where you see the columns and the headers with numbers starting from 1. In this case known as the 'R1C1' reference style view each cell can be identified with numbers. The columns are numbered from 1 to 256 in Excel 2003 and the rows are numbered from 1 to 65536. In Excel 2007 the rows are numbered from 1 to 1048576 and columns from 1 to 16384. For example, the 4th row and the third colum cell would be identified as 'R4C3'. Mostly Microsoft Excel uses the 'R1C1' reference style when recording macros. Most people, however, work with the default alpha-numeric style.
You can now enter text, numbers, currencies, dates, formulas and functions in the cells. It is a good idea to apply the proper formatting on the entered data. For example, we may want to enter the salaries of employees as whole numbers and the prices of items in decimal format. Calculations in Microsoft Excel are performed by using the 'cell addresses', i. e. we do not use the values in the cells. For example, let's say, we have the whole number '10' in cell A1 and the decimal number '5.6' in cell B1. Now we wanted to display the sum of these two numbers in cell C1. We would use the formula '=A1+B1' in cell C1. So you see, we have not used the formula '=10+5.6' in the cell C1. Text in Excel can not only be formatted in Excel but it can also be manipulated in interesting ways. For example, you entered 'Andy Davis' in cell A1. Now you want to seperate the first and the last names. That can be done easily in Excel.
Date and times are entered into Excel cells in special formats and they can be manipulated using formulas and functions. This can be very useful in project management or time management. Formulas and functions form the heart of Excel. You can use simple in-built functions like 'sum', 'average', 'maximum', 'minimum', etc or you can create your own complicated functions and formulas to perform interesting and difficult calculations.
Next you have to decide where and how you wish to place your data in Excel. A good design helps in the ease of calculations later. Empty rows and columns between data should be avoided. If the data we enter into Excel cells spans a very big range and we need to keep the headers in place while we scroll up and down or left and right, we can freeze the column and/or the row headers. This 'freezing' helps us to see which data belongs to which item.
Once the data is in place, we need to get information out of our data. Microsoft Excel provides excellent tools to sort, filter, format and analyze data. Using these tools you could, for example, easily find out which salesperson is performing well or which product is selling well or how much money people owe your business or vice versa. Sometimes we may need to know quickly whether we have an item in stock or not. The 'scenarios' feature in Excel helps us understand worst, normal and good situations.
You may also need to present your data to your boss or another company. Microsoft Excel's charting and Pivot tables and reports provide an excellen way to present your data.
After familiarizing yourself with many of the lovely possibilities of using Excel for your business, professional or personal needs, you may try your hand at 'macros'. Macros help you to automate many calculations and data entries. You will need to learn Visual Basic for Application (VBA). VBA is easy to learn and the Visual Basic Editor comes free with Excel.