I’m going to take a break from showing you how to copy data so that I can go over some of the ways of formatting data in Excel–including by copying. Excel provides more ways to format data than any one person could ever need. So I want to begin by showing some basic formatting options that I use frequently when creating my college lists.
The University of Wisconsin offers a guarantee to graduate in four years. The University of Illinois guarantees its tuition for four years. Both offers are fairly new to colleges in general and don’t have much of a track record in terms of students enrolling under the programs. So which is a better deal? Or are they both just gimmicks for colleges to sooth the family fear of rising tuition costs?
In the last lesson I showed you how to select and copy a column of data from one spreadsheet to another. In this lesson, I’ll go into more ways to copy data in Excel by copying and pasting multiple columns. I also show with how to paste data into a new column of an existing spreadsheet. To complete this lesson, you need to create a work tab as instructed in Part 1.
Chances are that you won’t be using all of the data available in the DIY College Rankings spreadsheets. Once you’ve defined some basic filters, it’s generally a good idea to copy the data you want to work with to a different spreadsheet tab in the Excel workbook. This way you can add to or modify the data without accidentally deleting or creating errors in the original data. In this lesson, I’m going to show you the basics of how to copy data in Excel.
I’m not covering topics in the way most people are taught to use spreadsheets. I’m trying to provide enough information for you to be able to start using the DIY spreadsheets as soon as possible. And then I’ll start filling in other information that you need to know but wouldn’t be as useful in starting to use the spreadsheets.
In this lesson I explain how to insert a column and why you would want to when using the DIY Spreadsheets. This is going to have you do things that I won’t explain now but in upcoming lessons. I just wanted to show you how to do something that can help you start using the data.
In this lesson I’m going to make sure you know how to get around the Excel spreadsheet. I know that a lot a people figure out how to do something in an application, not just Excel, and never really learn any of the other features available. I know that’s the case for me. While putting together these lessons on how to use Excel, I’ve learned different ways of doing things. So I want to point out a few features and how to use them.
In this lesson I’m going to show you how to open and save the Excel spreadsheet. I know this is still pretty basic but I really want to emphasize the important of creating a backup file. While I’ve “write protected” some of the tabs to ensure a copy of the data is always available in the file, it doesn’t do any good when the file itself disappears.
If you believe a picture is worth a 1000 words or just have to communicate with someone who isn’t interested reading more than 140 characters at a time, infographics are for you. There are plenty of infographics on college costs that can be used as an introduction to topic. Of course, some are better than others. I think the following five college costs infographics are worth taking the time to look at.