Getting Started with Excel Online

The Excel Online calculation program is part of the free Office Online package. Everything works over the internet. So you need to be online to use the word processing program. Documents you create through Office Online are stored on OneDrive. That’s Microsoft’s virtual hard drive. The documents are on your account on the internet. You can then access it from any computer or tablet with internet access.

To use Excel Online and the other parts of Office Online, you need a Microsoft account. That is an email address such as from Hotmail, Outlook.com or Live.com and a password. Don’t have a Microsoft account yet? Then read the article ‘Create a Microsoft account’.

• Go to www.office.com and click To register.
• Enter your Microsoft account email address and click Next one.
• Enter the password and click To register.
• Under ‘Apps’, click Excel.
• You will end up in the online Excel environment. Every time you log in to Excel Online, you have to choose what you want to do. Start with a new document, browse through the templates, or open recent documents. We click on New empty workbook.

An empty document opens.

The functions of Excel Online are in the Ribbon above your document, and in the menus. It concerns the following menus:

• File: in this menu you will find options such as ‘New’ for a new document, ‘Save (as)’ to save your document in the meantime and ‘Print’ to print your document. Click the arrow at the top left to go back to your document.
• Homepage: In this section you will find things like the font, size and color of letters, as well as data pasting and formatting options.
• Insert: A section for inserting all kinds of things, from tables to graphs.
• Draw: to digitally draw something in the file with a pen or marker.
• Page layout: For settings around layout, such as orientation.
• Formulas: Excel is a calculation program in which you can enter formulas to perform calculations.
• Facts: a less used part. Here you use data from a database.
• Check: Options to place a comment in your document.
• Image: Change the appearance of your document here and show and hide headings and gridlines.

The green bar at the top of the screen shows the name Microsoft has given your document. You can change this name. Click on the default name (usually something like “Workbook”), type a name and press the Enter key on your keyboard. The change is implemented immediately.

The file is automatically saved to OneDrive. So you don’t have to do this.

You can find your created documents on OneDrive.

• At the top left, click the icon consisting of nine squares.
• click on OneDrive.
• OneDrive opens in a separate tab. click on My files and possibly on Documents.
• Click on a document to open it.

Want to go back to Excel from the documents in OneDrive? Then go to the other tab or click the icon with the squares at the top left and click Excel.

Finished? Click on your initials or profile picture in the top right and then on Sign out to log out or use the icon with the squares in the top left to go to another Microsoft service, for example the webmail service Outlook.com.