Overview of MS Excel 2007 Formula Bar

Let us talk about another component of the user interface called the Formula Bar. Notice that when you click on the cell, there is a box at the upper left hand corner of the screen that tells you which cell you are currently in. For example, clicking on cell B2 will show the cell reference B2 here in this box. Now, this box is called the Name Box. This box comes in pretty handy when you want to quickly see where you cursor is. Also, check out what happens when you type a cell address in the name box and then you press Enter. I will go ahead and type in H2 and hit Enter and you will notice that my cursor immediately moved to cell H2.

The button next to the Name Box is a little button called the Insert Function button which many people referred to this button as the Function Wizard. Now, you will explore this function where it is a little later in this series. But, in short, the Function Wizard allows you to get a little bit of help with your Excel functions. The white area next to the Function Wizard essentially provides an input, output field allowing you to define the content to the cell as well as read the content of the cell. Now, these three components together, the Name Box, the Insert Function button and the Input, Output field that we just talked about together will make up what we call the Formula Bar.

Now, why is this Formula Bar so important to know about? Well, in Excel, a cell may display a value that makes sense to you. But, if the value is made up of a formula, for example, you would know it just by looking at the cell. The formula bar allows you to see the content of the cell. Let us do a couple of test. First, in cell A1, enter the number 1, in cell B1, enter the number 2 and in cell C1, enter the number 3. Now, you will notice as you click on each of these cells, the Formula Bar shows or displays the same number as displayed in the cell. This is because these are the contents of those cells. There are no surprise the Formula Bar would show these numbers.

Now, in cell D1 enter the following formula, =A1+B1+C1. Now, you will notice these drop down boxes as you type your formulas in. These are Excel’s way of helping you out with formulas but do not worry about this right now. Just go ahead and type in your formula and hit enter. Now, you will see that cell D1 displays a number 6. Why is a number 6 displayed? That is because 3+1+2=6. Now, if I click on cell D1, you will notice that the Formula Bar does not display a number 6. Instead, it displays the actual content of the cell. That is why Formula Bar is so important. Instead, I was just displaying what is in the cell. It tells you the exact contents of the cell. Now, on last thing about the Formula Bar, in addition to reading cell contents, you can actually change cell content by typing directly into the formula bar. For example, if I click on cell E1, I just type in Mike Alexander and Enter. You will notice that cell E1 has the words or the name Mike Alexander in there. By the way, you will notice that I expanded this column and I did this simply by double clicking on the line between the two columns and you will learn this trick in the next topic.

So, let us talk about by looking on the Formula Bar with one last feature that is new in Excel 2007 and that is an Expanding Formula Bar. If you have a text a little too long for the Formula Bar, for example, I have got some text here in the text file. I am going to click on Alt Tab in order to get to that and again, you can use your own text here. Just type some text and test this out. I am going to press Control C to copy that text out, press Alt Tab again to get back to Excel. And then, I am going to click on the Formula Bar here and press Control V to paste it in. Now, you will notice in the Formula Bar, the text is there but you cannot see all of it. Well, Excel 2007 allows you to expand the Formula Bar by simply dragging the bottom of the bar down to the height that you need. Again, this is only in Excel 2007, a new feature for the Formula Bar. Keep in mind, if you expand the Formula Bar, you will have to collapse