Spreadsheets: Organizing Numbers

Have you ever seen a big table full of numbers and wondered how people keep track of them all? That’s where spreadsheets come in!

A spreadsheet is a piece of software that helps you organize information in rows and columns. It’s like a giant piece of digital graph paper.

Rows, Columns, and Cells

• Columns go up and down and are usually named with letters (A, B, C…).
• Rows go across from left to right and are named with numbers (1, 2, 3…).
• A Cell is the little box where a row and a column meet. We give each cell a “name” based on its column and row, like A1 or C5.

Why use Spreadsheets?

Spreadsheets are amazing because they can do math for you! If you have a list of prices for a party, you can tell the spreadsheet to add them all up. If you change one price, the spreadsheet automatically recalculates the total.

People use spreadsheets for:

• Keeping track of money (budgets).
• Making lists of things.
• Creating charts and graphs.
• Doing quick calculations.

Formulas: The Magic of Spreadsheets

To make a spreadsheet do math, you use something called a formula. A formula always starts with an equals sign (=). For example, if you want to add the numbers in cell A1 and A2, you would type =A1+A2.

Questions

1. What do we call the little box where a row and a column meet?
2. If you are looking at the third column and the fifth row, what is the name of that cell?
3. Why is a spreadsheet better than just writing numbers on a piece of paper?
4. What symbol must every formula start with in a spreadsheet?