Introduction. This lesson provides you with information for getting started working with Excel worksheets. In this lesson, you will learn how to navigate through a worksheet, enter data, and check the cell reference. You will also learn how to create a new workbook, and learn several methods for saving workbooks and opening existing workbooks. Finally, you will close a workbook without exiting Excel. In This Lesson. This lesson contains exercises for the following topics: Topic: About Worksheet and Workbook Design Topic: Navigating Through and Reading Worksheet Data Topic: Entering Data Topic: Saving a Workbook Topic: Closing a Workbook Topic: Creating a New Workbook Topic: Opening an Existing Workbook Before You Begin. Before you begin this lesson, you should have Excel 2002 and 2003 and JAWS running. Topic: About Workbook and Worksheet Design Introduction. Before you begin recording your data, you should carefully consider how your data should be organized. Think about the kind of data you want to track. Can the data be divided into categories? Can one category of data be further divided into sub-categories? Taking the time to organize your data will ensure that your data analysis is accurate and you can readily locate the information you need. About Workbook Design. A workbook should be devoted to one category. For instance, suppose you want to track product, client contact, and sales information. In this scenario you should use three workbooks to track each category of information. Remember, a workbook can have many worksheets. Use the worksheets to hold sub-categories of information. In a workbook that tracks products used in a spa, use one worksheet to track hair care products, a worksheet for manicure products, and a worksheet for body care products. About Worksheet Design. The layout and formatting of data in a worksheet can vary widely. Generally, however, the data in a worksheet is laid out like data in a table. You should use text labels for the data to help the reader understand the purpose of the worksheet data. Usually, a descriptive text label for a row of data appears in one of the first four columns in the row. Likewise, a text label for a column of data appears in one of the first four rows of the column. However, text labels can be placed anywhere on the worksheet. About Regions. Regions are defined once you begin to enter data into a worksheet. You learned that a single worksheet has 256 columns and 65,536 rows. This allows you to enter a lot of data on a single worksheet. Often, a worksheet author will use blank rows and columns to visually divide worksheets that contain lots of data, similar to using several tables in one word processing document. Excel refers to contiguous blocks of cells containing data surrounded by at least one blank row and column as regions. If you have set JAWS's Regions verbosity setting to Multiple JAWS will announce, "New Region," when you move to a new region. (If the region has been assigned a name, JAWS will read the region's name.) What You Learned. In this topic, you learned: Before you begin recording your data, you should carefully consider how your data should be organized. Taking the time to organize your data will ensure that your data analysis is accurate and you can readily locate the information you need. A workbook should be devoted to one category and each workbook's worksheet should hold one sub-category of information. The layout and formatting of data in a worksheet can vary widely. Generally, however, the data in a worksheet is laid out like data in a table. You should use text labels for the data to help the reader understand the purpose of the worksheet data. A descriptive text label for a row of data usually appears in one of the first four columns in the row. Likewise, a text label for a column of data appears in one of the first four rows of the column. However, text labels can be placed anywhere on the worksheet. Regions are defined once you begin to enter data into a worksheet. A region is a contiguous block of cells containing data surrounded by at least one blank row and column. (If you have set JAWS's Regions verbosity setting to Multiple JAWS will announce, "New Region" when you move to a new region.)