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Information is entered into an Excel worksheet by modifying the cells within that sheet. The process is pretty much the same regardless of whether you are entering information into empty cells or cells that already contain data. To enter information into an empty cell, simply activate the cell and then begin typing. As soon as you do, the formula bar becomes activated and two icons appeared to the left of the formula bar.

Once you finish typing you may do one of two things: you can either cancel, which will abandon the changes you’ve made to the cell; or you can confirm the changes you’ve made. To cancel, you can either click on the cancel button on the left of the formula bar or press the escape key on your keyboard. To confirm your changes, you can either click on the Enter button to the left of the formula bar or press the Enter key on your keyboard.

Pressing the Enter key achieves two things: it confirms your data entry and, usually, moves you down one cell. This is normally fairly convenient. However Excel allows you to decide what actually happens when you press the Enter key. To do so, click on the Office button and choose Excel options. On the left of the dialog box, click the advanced Tab to display “Editing Options”. The first Editing Option “After pressing enter move selection” allows you to specify the direction in which you will move whenever you press the Enter key.

You have two options: either choose a direction (”down”, “right”, “up” or “left”); or, simply deactivate the movement. This will mean that, whenever you input data and press the Enter key, the information goes into the cell but the cell stays active and you don’t move down one cell.

If we need to enter data into several cells, Excel allows us to make a selection and then navigate between the selected cells, entering information as you go. For example say we wish to fill out an invoice: we can select a matrix of cells under the “quantity”, “description” and “unit price” columns. Once we’ve entered the quantity, we can then press the Tab key on the keyboard to move to the “description” column. We can then press Tab again to move the “price” column, and so on.

When we reach the last column of our selection, pressing Tab again moves us to the second selected row. When we reach the bottom right of the selection, if we continue to press Tab, we are taken back to the top left once more. Excel even allows us to move in reverse by pressing Shift and Tab keys together.

There is an alternative to moving right and then down. We can move down first and then to the right by pressing the Enter key instead of the Tab key. Also, pressing Shift and Enter together allows us to move in reverse, i.e., up and then to the left.

There are two ways of entering information into a cell that already contains a value. The first is simply to type a new value: activate the cell; type the value and then press the Enter key. The second is to edit the value. To do this, you can either double-click on the cell and make your changes directly within the cell; or you can activate the cell and make your changes in the formula bar.