The concepts of "workbook", "worksheet", and "cells" are the primary building blocks of Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets or any other spreadsheet software. Understanding what each of these terms means is a crucial first step to becoming a spreadsheet wizard.

A workbook is the file on your computer labeled .xls (pre 2007) or .xlsx (post 2007 PC) that contains all of your information. For web-based cloud software like O365 or Google Sheets, the workbook is the main document that you created and gave a name based on what kind of information it will contain or what it will do. Creating a new workbook is simple: under the "File" menu within excel, look for "New" and either choose "Blank Template" to start from scratch with a single empty worksheet with many empty cells or use one of the template options that match your objective.

A worksheet is the set of empty rectangles that you see when you open up a new blank workbook that will be default be named "Sheet1". Worksheets all have letter based labels along the top to denote columns and number based labels along the left to denote rows. Most workbooks contain many worksheets, which can be accessed by their labeled tabs along the bottom of the workbook. You can create a new worksheet by clicking the "plus" next to the last worksheet in the list and you can rename it by "Right clicking" on the newly created worksheet. From a practical perspective, you will typically divide your work among many worksheets to keep things organized by purpose. For example: you may have the first worksheet be the "Summary" that pulls critical information from the "Analysis" worksheet which performs various calculations based on the "Data" worksheet that contains the raw information. It is up to you to decide how to divide up your information into multiple worksheets and what to name them but it is important that you do it in a way that someone else could logically follow if they were to open your workbook. Clarity is key.

A cell is the most fundamental building block of Excel and cells are what every worksheet is composed of. Every cell in a worksheet has an "Address" that is used to differentiate itself from other cells and be easily identified when the information the contains needs to be referenced by another cell. The address for a cell is determined by its relative position to the top left position of the worksheet where it is contained, which which has the address of A1 (A for being in the worksheet's first column and 1 for being in the worksheet's first row). Cells may contain lots of different types of information and are the entry point for any calculations which you perform within Excel, which we will cover in detail later in this course.

In summary, workbooks are composed of one or many worksheets which are in-turn composed of many cells.

Visual Cheatsheet of Excel's Core Features (MAC)

Visual Cheatsheet of Excel's Core Features (PC)

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