Finding your way around a spreadsheet

In the screenshot above you will see a large, complex spreadsheet open in Google Sheets. You'll find a copy of this spreadsheet at this link to experiment with. The data is taken from the South African Police Services' quarterly crime stats updates. You can't edit this spreadsheet, but you can make a copy into your own Google drive by clicking on the File menu and selecting "Make a copy".

Let's take a look at the numbered areas and what they mean.

1. This is the title of the spreadsheet. In this case, the green label shows that the original file was in Microsoft XLSX format, but it has been uploaded and converted to Google Sheets. You'll also see some details about the file location in your drive and when it was last edited at the top of the screen.

2. Below the title, you will find the drop down menus. Some of the options in these you will recognise from other applications. Some, such as entering formulae, charts or changing the format of a cell content are specific to spreadsheets.

3. The fundamental unit of a spreadsheet is a cell. A cell is one of the grid rectangles in the main part of the screen. Sometimes, however, what you see in a cell is not the actual content - it may be a formula or calculation. For example, the formula SUM(2+2) will make the number 4 appear in a cell. The formula bar at number 3 shows you the "real" contents of a selected cell. You can enter text, numbers or formula here or by typing directly into a cell.

4. Spreadsheets are navigated using columns and rows. Columns are the vertical separations indicated by letters at the top of the spreadsheet. You can select the whole of column A by clicking on the A, and drag, drop, delete or insert new columns by right clicking on the letter.

5. Rows are the horizontal separators, indicated by a number. They work in the same way as columns. Individual cells are refernced by a column letter and row number. The cell highlighted in this example is A1. Ranges of columns and rows are indicated by the use of a colon. For example, A:E means "everything in columns A, B, C, D and E". A1:C5 means "everything in column A rows 1-5, column B rows 1-5 and column C rows 1-5".

6. Spreadsheet software allows you to work with multiple tables at once. this is very useful - as we will see in the data analysis section of this course - if you want to merge datasets or create a pivot table in the same spreadsheet. Individual tables are known as "sheets" and are selected in these tabs at the bottom of the screen. It's good practice to give these meanginful names. You can see that it's haard to know what is in Sheet2, for example.

7. These symbols are tools for data analysis. They include the filter and sort features, for example.

8. This tool in Google Sheets is for Insights. It uses machine learning to suggest ways to summarise your data and more.

9. Finally, these two buttons enable you to quickly navigate between sheets if you have a lot of tabs at the bottom, or add a new sheet for extra working out.