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It Takes All Kinds (Of Cell Entries) 85
can also do the same thing in Backstage view by choosing File➪New and then clicking the Blank Workbook thumbnail.
As soon as you open a blank workbook, Excel makes its document window active. To then return to another workbook that you have open (which you would do if you wanted to copy and paste some of its data into one of the blank worksheets), click its button on the Windows taskbar or press Alt+Tab until its file icon is selected in the dialog box that appears in the middle of the screen.
If you ever open a blank workbook by mistake, you can just close it right away by pressing Ctrl+W, choosing File➪Close, or pressing Alt+FC. Excel then closes its document window and automatically returns you to the work- book window that was originally open at the time you mistakenly opened the blank workbook.
It Takes All Kinds (Of Cell Entries)
Before covering the many methods for getting data into the cells of your new spreadsheet, you need to understand which type of data you’re entering. To Excel, everything that you enter in any worksheet cell is either one of two types of data: text (also known as a label) or a number (also known as a value or numeric entry).
The reason that you should care about what type of data you’re entering into the cells of your worksheet is that Excel treats your entry differently, depending on what type of data it thinks you’ve entered.
✦ Text entries are automatically left-aligned in their cells, and if they con- sist of more characters than fit within the column’s current width, the extra characters spill over and are displayed in blank cells in columns on the right. (If these cells are not blank, Excel cuts off the display of any characters that don’t fit within the cell borders until you widen its column.)
✦ Numbers are automatically right-aligned in their cells, and if they con- sist of more characters (including numbers and any formatting char- acters that you add) than fit within the column’s current width, Excel displays a string of number signs across the cell (######), telling you to widen the column. (In some cases, such as decimal numbers, Excel truncates the decimal places shown in the cell instead of displaying the number-sign overflow indicators.)
So, now all you have to know is how Excel differentiates text data entries from numeric data entries.
Book II Chapter 1
Building Worksheets