Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2003 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book?
  • What This Book Does for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Office 2003 in 24 Hours?
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Part I. Working with Office 2003
  • Hour 1. Getting Acquainted with Office 2003
  • Part II. Processing with Word 2003
  • Hour 2. Welcome to Word 2003
  • Hour 3. Formatting with Word 2003
  • Hour 4. Managing Documents and Customizing Word 2003
  • Hour 5. Advanced Word 2003
  • Part III. Computing with Excel 2003
  • Hour 6. Understanding Excel 2003 Workbooks
  • Hour 7. Restructuring and Editing Excel 2003 Worksheets
    • Worksheet Editing
    • Inserting and Deleting
    • Working with Worksheet Ranges
    • Using Formulas
    • Recalculating Worksheets
    • Working with Functions
    • Introduction to Worksheet Formatting
    • Making Format Changes
    • Summary
    • Q&A
  • Hour 8. Using Excel 2003
  • Hour 9. Formatting Worksheets to Look Great
  • Hour 10. Charting with Excel 2003
  • Part IV. Presenting with Flair
  • Hour 11. PowerPoint 2003 Presentations
  • Hour 12. Editing and Arranging Your Presentations
  • Hour 13. PowerPoint 2003 Advanced Features
  • Hour 14. Animating Your Presentations
  • Part V. Organizing with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 15. Communicating with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 16. Planning and Scheduling with Outlook 2003
  • Part VI. Tracking with Access 2003
  • Hour 17. Access 2003 Basics
  • Hour 18. Entering and Displaying Access 2003 Data
  • Hour 19. Retrieving Your Data
  • Hour 20. Reporting with Access 2003
  • Part VII. Combining Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 21. Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 22. Creating Web Content with Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint
  • Part VIII. Publishing Eye-Catching Documents
  • Hour 23. Publishing with Flair Using Publisher 2003
  • Hour 24. Adding Art to Your Publications
  • Part IX. Appendixes
  • Appendix B. Business Contact Manager and Office Extras
  • Part X. Bonus Hours
  • Hour 25. Using FrontPage 2003 for Web Page Design and Creation
  • Hour 26. Managing Your Web with FrontPage

Working with Worksheet Ranges

A range is a group of cells. A selected group of cells composes a range. A range is always rectangular, and it might be a single cell, a row, a column, or several adjacent rows and columns. The cells within a range are always contiguous, but you can select multiple ranges at the same time. You can perform various operations on ranges, such as moving and copying. If, for example, you want to format a row of totals in some way, you first select the range that includes the totals and then apply the format to that range.

Figure 7.3 shows three ranges on a worksheet. You can describe a range by the cell reference of the upper-left cell of the range (the anchor point) and the cell reference of the lower-right cell of the range. As you can see from Figure 7.3, multiple-celled ranges are designated by listing the anchor point, followed by a colon (:), followed by the range's lower-right cell reference. Therefore, the range that begins at B3 and ends at F4 has the range of B3:F4. To select more than one range, in case you want to apply formatting to different areas of your worksheet at once, hold Ctrl while selecting the ranges.

Figure 7.3 Three ranges appear on this worksheet.

In Excel, you often work with ranges. One of the ways to make your worksheets more manageable is to name your ranges. Range names are far easier to remember than range references. You might assign the name Titles to your column titles, for example, Months to your column of month names, and so on.

To Do: Name a Range

To name a range, perform these steps:

1. Select the cells that you want to include in the named range.
2. Click the name box at the left of the formula bar (the text box that displays cell references).
3. Type the range name. The name can be as long as 255 characters, and the first character must be a letter or the underscore character. The rest of the name can contain letters, numbers, a period, and the underscore character but no spaces or other special characters such as a question mark. The name cannot be the same as a possible cell reference, so R2D2 would not count as a valid range name.
4. Press Enter. When you subsequently select the range, you will see that Excel displays the range name rather than the range reference in the name box.

Range names are easier to remember than range references. If you create a payroll worksheet and assign the names GrossPay, NetPay, HoursWorked, TaxRate, and PayRate to the ranges holding that data, for example, you never again have to type the range references. When you want to move or copy one of the ranges or use the range as a formula, just refer to the range name and let Excel figure out the correct references. You learn how to use ranges (including range names) in formulas in the section called "Using Formulas."

If you create a large worksheet and you need to return to a named range to make some changes, click the name box's drop-down list arrow and select the name. Excel instantly displays and selects that range for you. Moving around Excel is much simpler once you set up a set of named ranges.

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