Microsoft Excel and System Access work hand in hand to provide intuitive and easy access to spreadsheets and charts. System Access works with Microsoft Excel 2003, and Microsoft Excel 2007. Microsoft Excel is generally used to keep track of data such as work hours, grade averages, sports scores, banking info, and so on. A typical excel worksheet consists of cells. These cells usually hold some kind of data, a person’s name, address, age, etc. Some cells are used to hold column and/or row header information. So as an example, cells a1 through d1 could contain header information such as name, date, department, and hours. Below this header row, you would then begin typing the person’s information. So in A2 you would type a name such as Linda. B2 could hold today’s date, such as 3/20/2007. C2 would hold a department, such as sales. Finally, in D2 you could put someone’s hours worked for a day, such as 10. This example is meant to be very simplistic to illustrate how System Access works with Excel.
Now that we have the basics covered, lets dive right into excel. We will show you how to create a very basic Excel sheet to calculate work hours. A full-blown worksheet would likely contain more data than ours will, but it will suffice for our examples. It is up to you to learn the nuances of excel on your own as teaching full excel usage is far beyond the scope of our help system. OK. Ready. Start. Your. Spreadsheets!
You will hear, “Microsoft Excel. Book 1. Sheet 1. A1”. Book 1 refers to the fact that Excel groups multiple spreadsheets into a workbook, or just book for short. So whenever you begin a new workbook by starting Excel, you automatically start with a blank workbook containing three spreadsheets, called sheets for short. Finally, A1 refers to the cell that you automatically are placed in when you first open Excel. Cell A1 is located at the top left corner of the first spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are arranged in a grid pattern. Columns are designated by letters and rows by numbers.
Now that we are here in A1, we can type anything we like. For our example however, let’s type Name. Then press the tab key to move right one cell. You will hear “Blank, B1”. This information tells you that you have in fact moved right by one cell, and the cell you have moved to is empty. In B1 type Date. In C1, type Department. Finally, in D1 type Daily Hours. Now tap the enter key. You will be placed in A2. We have now defined the template that the rest of our sheet will be based upon. If you are new to Excel, you may wish to save your work thus far. If you do, simply press Control+S, type in a name for the workbook, and then tap the enter key. By default, your workbook will be saved in the documents folder.
Now that we have defined the column headers, let’s verify where we are before we add some information to the sheet. If you read the status bar with Modifier+three on the number pad, you will hear, “A2, one row, four columns”. That kind of information can be handy at times, if you get a bit lost in a very large spreadsheet. Please realize that you may Tab and/or Shift+Tab or use all four arrow keys to move around the sheet.
So, in A2, type the name Tom, and then tab to B2, the next cell to the right. Let’s say you have forgotten what column you are in, if you press Modifier+C, you will hear “Date B1”. This command does not move you at all, but only reads the column header to you. Note that you are still located in B2. Similarly, if you want to hear the first cell in the current row press Alt+Modifier+r. You will hear “Tom, A2”. Again, this command does not move you, but simply reads the relevant information. OK, so we know that we are under the date column header. If you press Control+Colon, Excel will automatically enter today’s date into the cell. When you press Control+Colon, you will hear, “editing”, followed by today’s date. Now tab to the next column/cell. Now we are under the department column header, so let’s type Sales. In the D2 cell, we will type 10 to indicate the number of hours that Tom worked today. Note that after you tap the enter key, Excel places you in D3 rather than A3. This is due to the grid like nature of Excel. It believes you may want to add something else under the figure we entered in D2. Since this is not the case, it will be necessary to arrow back to A3, or tap the home key to jump directly back to the beginning of row number 3.
The following bits of information will be given separated by commas. Each row will be on one line, and will begin with A3. There will only be two more rows in our spreadsheet.
Glen, 0/0/00, Accounting, 9.
Sarah, 0/0/00, HR, 8.
Now that we have a few lines of data, lets Make Excel do a bit of work for a change. Move to cell C5. Once there type Total Hours Worked. Now press the tab key to move to D5. Here we will make Excel calculate the total number of hours automatically for us! Just type Alt+Equals. For the sake of clarity, this means that you hold down the Alt key, and then tap the equals sign, then release both keys. You will hear, “Editing. SUM (D2:D4)”. Now just tap the enter key. You will probably be placed into cell D6. Just tap the up arrow key to move back to cell D5. You should hear “27”. What we have done is told excel to create a very simple formula to calculate the daily hours column! When you arrow up to the cell with the formula you will notice a high-pitched beep. This indicates that the cell contains of formula. The total number of hours is spoken, and then after a slight pause, the formula Excel is using is spoken as well.
When Modifier+F7 is pressed, you can explore data within the entire spreadsheet. When you arrow to a particular piece of information in the list box, the cell’s location is spoken, as well as the data the cell is holding. Pressing enter moves you to that data. If you tab to the links list box, tapping the enter key on one of the links will activate the link regardless of where it is within the spreadsheet. Tabbing once again places you in the totals list box. Here you can arrow down through any number of cells containing calculated data. Note that after the totals data is spoken for a cell, you hear the message, “Not Spoken”. This indicates that the totals cell will not be spoken when data in the formula changes, or is manually changed. If you want to have the totals information spoken automatically, simply tap the space bar.
Tabbing once more brings you into the list of worksheets within the current workbook. Pressing enter on one of these sheets will place you within that sheet. When you are finished with the list boxes, simply either press enter, or escape to close them.
System Access makes it easy to define title ranges in an Excel worksheet. A title range can be either a row of column titles starting at a given column, or a column of row titles starting at a given row. To add or delete a title range, press Modifier+Shift+T. If you are defining a row of column titles, you must already be on the first cell of that row which contains a title. Likewise, if you are defining a column of row titles, you must already be on the first cell of that column which contains a title. When you press Modifier+Shift+T for the first time in a worksheet, there will be no title ranges yet, so your only option will be to add one. Simply select whether you are defining a row of column titles or a column of row titles, and you're done. As with other document-specific settings, title ranges are automatically saved and will continue to be used even when you access the same document from another computer. When you press Modifier+Shift+T in the future, you will first be asked whether you want to add or delete a title range. If you choose to add one, the rest of the procedure will be the same as when you added the first one. If you choose to delete a title range, you will be prompted to choose which one you want to delete, and you're done. Remember that adding and deleting title ranges does not change the worksheet itself; it only changes how System Access interprets the worksheet. So there is no harm in deleting a title range by mistake; just move to the appropriate cell and define it again.
Once you define a title range, the titles in that range are spoken automatically as you move around. Specifically, column titles are spoken automatically when you move from column to column, and row titles are spoken automatically when you move from row to row. When you press Modifier+Up Arrow to read a single cell, any title associated with that cell is spoken. However, titles are automatically spoken only when the appropriate title ranges have been explicitly defined; System Access never automatically guesses the column or row title.
You may also define regions in excel that you would like spoken automatically. To do this, just select the cells by tapping the F5 key, typing in a range of cells, such as a1:d5, followed by Enter. System Access will begin to confirm that you have selected multiple cells. You can tap the Control key to silence the speech; the data will remain selected. Now you can press Modifier+ numbers 1 through 0 on the numbers row of the keyboard. This defines the region. Now if you press Shift+Modifier+ numbers 1 through 0 on the numbers row, a menu will pop up allowing you to have the region spoken automatically, or allowing you to delete the region entirely. Note, there will be no confirmation of region deletion.
System Access can also read charts. Data within the chart can be copied to the clipboard for insertion into other documents. If the chart is on a worksheet without any other data outside of the chart, you may move to the chart by pressing Control+Page up or Control+Page down. You may also use the sheets list box described above to move to a chart. If you move to a sheet that does have data outside of the chart’s data, System Access will let you know, in which case you can press Modifier+Enter to activate the chart. If the worksheet has more than one chart, Modifier+Enter will display a list of charts of which to choose. When you are finished with the chart just tap escape to return to the regular worksheet.