This is the first in a series of tutorials that will cover Excel in depth.

This is also then first Screenbook in a five book set that walks through some of Excel's most interesting features.

It is customary to start out with the simplest functions and work up to more difficult ones, but let's try starting by walking through a project that shows just how powerful Excel can be.

Here we have Excel opened up to a sample spreadsheet.

You can download the spreadsheet here and follow along, if you like. Or, view the slides now, and try it yourself later.

This worksheet is actually showing two tables of data, one of which is incomplete.

First, let's format the tables so that it is clear which data is in which table.

Clicking on column G selects the entire column.

Now, right-click on the selected area to show the pop-up menu for cells. (The grid with all of the data is called a worksheet. A cell is one of the squares in the grid.)

Format Cells is one of the options in the pop-up menu.

Clicking on Format Cells opens the Format Cells dialog.

Column F is the end of one table, and Column G is the start of the next, so let's put a thick line between the two. Click on the Border tab.

This displays the Format Cells dialog.

We want to use a thick line when making the border, so first click on the thick line in the Line Style box. A dotted line will show around the thick line to indicate that it is selected.

Now click on the left line in the Border box. This causes a thick black line to appear. This will be the left border on the selected area. (We selected all of column G, remember?)

Now click OK to apply the formatting changes and return to the worksheet.

When we first return to the worksheet, the column is still selected, so we can't see the new border.

Click on any cell outside of the column to de-select the column. Then the border becomes visible.

OK, things are starting to clear up a bit. We can see that we have a table of data in columns A - F, and some other information in columns G-I. Lets make the tables easier to see by formatting the column headers (the titles of the columns).

First, let's do the table in columns A-F. Select the column headers by first clicking on column A1 and then dragging the mouse over to column F1. The cells become highlighted to show that they are selected.

Now, right-click on the selected area. The pop-up menu shows, just as before.

Clicking on Format Cells shows the Format Cells dialog. We'll be changing the background color of the column headers, which we can do from the Patterns dialog.

Here is the Pattern dialog. We have just selected a new background color for the selected cells in the worksheet.

Next, we'll be changing the font color via the Font dialog.

This is the Font dialog. Clicking on the Color select item displays a menu of colors.

We are going to select the color white from the menu.

Here the color white has been selected.

Next we'll be using the Border dialog.

First, select a medium thickness border line.

Next, we choose cyan for the border color. This changes the color of the lines in the Line Style menu.

Next, clicking the two border buttons indicated changes the border color for all line in the Border box.

Click OK to apply the formatting and return to the worksheet.

Now the column headers are nicely formatted.

There are two more separate tables on this sheet. Next, let's apply similar formatting to these two other tables.

Here is the worksheet with the additional tables formatted.

Now that the data is more clearly visible, we're ready to start working with the data in the next tutorial.