using ClarisWorks Office (AppleWorks) - spreadsheet

it's a table, a live-update calculator

and draws graphs or charts of your data

Contents

• what's a spreadsheet?
• where do I start?
• what's on the screen
• pick a number, any number
• entering data
• calculating for you: totals and averages
• 
  
  

  What's a spreadsheet?

  Literally it is a program that spreads out a balance sheet, a sheet of figures, numbers, whatever you need to set out and make into some kind of sense.

  People use spreadsheets for working out household budgets, personal finances, wage sheets, just about any kind of business record involving numbers (usually money), although you can also use them to make any kind of table (e.g. a calendar).

  You could use a spreadsheet to record the maximum temperature over several weeks, each week set under the previous one (like on a calendar), so you could compare the temperatures just by looking at them.
  Then you could set-up the spreadsheet to take the average of each week's top temperatures.
  The spreadsheet program would draw a line graph for you, with a differently-coloured line for each week, comparing the different lines for the different weeks.

  My seven-year-old daughter was tickled pink to find that she could use the ClarisWorks for Kids demo I downloaded, to put in the ages or heights of people in the family, and then get a coloured bar graph, which she could print out.

  The grown-up ClarisWorks spreadsheet is as much fun as a toy, and as easy to use, but it does some helpful, necessary and serious things, in the home and at the office.

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  where do I start?

  As always with ClarisWorks, you simply open the program, or if it's already open select New from the File menu.
  Either way, you are asked what kind of document you want to start: wordprocessing, spreadsheet, database, drawing or painting.

  You will also notice that if you check the box use Assistant or Stationery, a pull-down menu (starting with 'All Assistants') appears at the top of your new-document-choose box.

  Stationery is any kind of template (shaped for you) document that ClarisWorks sets up for you, to make a task easier.
  You can also set up a document for yourself and go to the File menu and Save it As Stationery (so you don't have to set a document up that way repeatedly, but can open the Stationery document you have made, instead, whenever you need it).

  When the pull-down menu shows 'All Stationery', you can see that there are several Stationery documents available which have a spreadsheet (like a calendar page) icon next to them:

  • Expense Report
  • Home Budget
  • In Case of Emergency
  • Investment Tracker
  • Lease vs Purchase Analyser
  • Mortgage Analyser
  all of which are set up ready for you to do these tasks.
  We'll have a go at one later. ;-)

  Assistants are built into ClarisWorks to give you interactive, live help with doing new tasks.
  They actually guide you through the task, step by step, so that there's no risk of stuffing up.
  They check each step you make, and report back to you on it, even drawing on the screen to show you where to put things!
  Nothing needs to go in the 'Too Hard' basket, with Assistants available.

  When the pull-down menu shows 'All Assistants', you can see that there is active help available to you in performing several useful tasks.
  When you click on 'Home Finance', under the list of options ClarisWorks then explains what this Assistant does:

  "This Assistant helps you address home finance questions. Such as figuring your net worth, buying a home, or taking out a loan."

  And it really will help you... all of the Assistants are pretty amazing, and you can try one anytime, with no risk of getting confused or of the task not working.

  But for now, let's uncheck the "Use Assistant or Stationery" box, because we're just going to open an empty, not-set-up in any way, spreadsheet document.
  Select 'Spreadsheet' and click on OK.

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  what's on the screen

  Lots and lots of little rectangular boxes, going off the screen to the right and to the bottom.

  These boxes form a table, made up of rows (across) and columns (down).

  The rows across each begin from a number on the left-hand side of the screen (starting from 1), and each column down begins from a letter of the alphabet at the top of the screen (starting from A).

  The letters and numbers tell the spreadsheet where something is -- every cell can be identified by its position on the sheet, e.g. F3.
  Computers work with least trouble when things are straightforward like that.
  So that's all it is -- lots of little boxes called cells, all lettered and numbered.

  Your spreadsheet could, if you wanted, only have one cell (box), which would be A1. You can decide how many cells you want.
  If you go into the Format menu and choose Document, you will see that you can choose how many rows and columns you want your document to have.
  Of course, you can change that at any time.
  Usually we just start with the unlimited page of boxes, until we know how many boxes we are going to need.

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  pick a number, any number

  All those spreadsheet cells are there just to help organize your details.
  You can certainly write any text you like into any box, and change the font, size, style and alignment at any time as in word-processing; you can also change the size of boxes to fit in the text, and get the text to wrap in the boxes -- the spreadsheet will handle text information fine, but what it is set-up to work at, what it can really help you with, is numbers.
  The poor thing is positively panting for you to give it some data.

  So let's do it. Pick some numbers. How about the ages of a group of people?
  Height is OK but you don't know the height of a whole bunch of people offhand, usually, and weight is an uncomfortable subject in these days of nagging about it.
  Let's try age.

  If you have some other set of figures that you would like to work with (weekly pay, several phone or other bills, the 'ph' of your soil over a period of time, up to you) then by all means use them instead.

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  entering data

  I'm going to use the ages of people in my family:

  Pete	40
  Clytie	40
  Sian	19
  Capel	16
  Trinh	7

  So the first thing I do is select cell A1 (by clicking in it) and type in:

  Ages of people in my family

  You will notice that when you select a cell, what you are typing appears first in the input line, at the top of the table.
  This saves you squinting at different cells as you type.
  You can change what is in a cell at any time:
  select it, and its contents will appear in the input line, so you can hit Delete, click anywhere in the input line, and then add or change any of it.

  Once you have typed in what you want to put in a cell, you can do one of three things to tell the program, "Yes, that's what I want in that cell":
  

  1. click on the tick next to the input line
     [always wondered what that was for!
     click on the cross is if it's not OK and you want to delete it]
  2. hit Return/Enter
  3. use the arrows on your keyboard to move to the next cell
  I find I get on much better with the arrows on the keyboard.

  If when you have typed in what you want, hitting the down or right arrow doesn't put the data in the cell and move you to the next one down or along,
  go to the Edit menu and select Preferences, and when you click on the Spreadsheet preferences, select the option to have arrow keys move you to the next cell they indicate.

  That way, you can type in numbers (which are most of the data entry in spreadsheets) using the numbers-block on the right-hand end of your keyboard, and use the arrows just to the left of that, to move around.
  Much less hunting and pecking at the keyboard ;-)

  So, now I've typed in my title (I can move it and restyle it later), and it stretches across several cells (that's OK, I can format the cells later).

  I then enter the descriptions of my data:
  (so I know what the numbers are about, and so the spreadsheet can put these descriptions on a graph or chart if I ask for one)

  selecting or moving to cell A2, I type in name
  selecting or moving to cell A3, I type in age

  Then I start entering the facts for name:

  B2: Pete, right arrow
  C2: Clytie, right arrow
  D2: Sian, right arrow
  E2: Capel, right arrow
  F2: Trinh, right arrow
  and that's it for the top line of data.

  Notice how smoothly you go along when you're entering data and using the arrows: not having to grab the mouse and select each new cell as you go along.

  Now for the number data, the facts for age:

  under Pete, selecting or moving to cell B3, I enter the number 40

  and you will notice that where a spreadsheet normally displays text starting from the left of a cell, it displays numbers at the right of the cell:
  partly because numbers are written that way on balance-sheets, to be added up or compared or listed in any way, but also to show you that it recognizes this data as a number, and will be able to do things with it.

  If you're using a spreadsheet to set out a table, you can select text and/or numbers and align them to left, right or centre of the cell.

  Using the right arrow, I proceed along underneath the names, entering the ages.

  B3: 40
  C3: 40
  D3: 19
  E3: 16
  F3: 7

  At this point, if I haven't done it earlier, I Save my document so my data won't be lost if something goes wrong (like a power flick) or if I stuff up at some stage (fingers slip, or brain goes blank for a minute!).

  So what is a spreadsheet going to do with these numbers?

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  calculating for you

  A spreadsheet can do practically anything you can do with numbers!

  Let's start with a simple total.

  Selecting the cell H2,
  (leaving the G row blank after the data so I don't get data and calculated results mixed up)
  I type in TOTAL,
  so I know what job the spreadsheet is doing here with my data
  (and in upper-case letters so it stands out from the people's names).

  If I hit the down arrow after typing TOTAL in, then I'm right below it where the total of the ages in my family will be calculated.

  A calculation in a spreadsheet is just an instruction you type in, which the program follows, and then displays the result in the cell you selected.

  So in cell H3, I type

  =sum(

  meaning
  "I want this cell to show a number equal to the sum (total) of (the data in these cells
  I could select each cell I wanted, separately, by clicking on each one of the five cells I want to add up, and the instruction would read:

  =sum(B3+C3+D3+E3+F3

  and all I'd have to do is put on the end bracket:

  =sum(B3+C3+D3+E3+F3)

  and hit Return or an arrow to move on, and the spreadsheet would add up all of those cells.

  However, when my information is all set out together,

  and if it isn't, you can rearrange your spreadsheet so the data you want to work on is all together,

  all I have to do is drag (click and hold down) the mouse from the left cell with Pete's age (B3) right across to Trinh's age (F3), so all the age cells are highlighted.

  Remember that when highlighting something, you can lift up the mouse and put it in a more convenient position on the mouse mat, without moving the cursor, as long as you don't let go of the button:
  just start where you have to, then hold that button down and keep moving the mouse, picking it up to make enough space for yourself, if necessary, until you end up with the things you want highlighted.

  This is a much easier way of showing the spreadsheet program which cells I want added up (total):
  you will notice that the input line now shows:
  

  =sum(B3...F3

  meaning 'add up the data in all the cells from B3 across to F3
  so all I have to do is put on the end bracket:

  =sum(B3..F3)

  and hit an arrow key, and lo and behold, the spreadsheet does the calculation pretty much instantly. Cell H3 now displays my total.

  If I click on, or use arrows to move to, this cell, you will notice that the input line at the top of the page shows the directions to the program [=sum(B3..F3)], not the answer.
  This is so you can see your instructions, and change them if you want to.

  The total of the ages in my family has been worked out by the spreadsheet as 122 (very ageing, really).

  Now I am going to anticipate my birthday a bit, and go to cell C3, which displays 40, and type in 41.
  You will notice that the total of our ages updates automatically to 123.

  This is the real beauty of spreadsheets: they are dynamic, and will adapt to changing data.
  They allow you to fiddle around with details, without having to do all the calculations again.
  Great for budgeting!

  I'm definitely feeling a bit aged now, so we might perform a different calculation.
  We don't have to get rid of the Total: that only belongs to that particular cell.

  Let's see what the average age is in this family: selecting cell I2, I type in AVERAGE
  then going down to cell I3 I type in:

  =average(

  and then select (drag across) the same cells, with all the ages, so the input line reads:

  =average(B3..F3

  then I just have to finish off the bracket:

  =average(B3..F3)

  and hit an arrow, and there the average is! (24.6, I can feel younger now ;-)

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  to be continued...

  
  clytie@riverland.net.au

  
  

  back to 'Look Here First'