Working with spreadsheets/Spreadsheet basics/Ranges

Range names and cell references
As far as Excel is concerned a cell reference in Excel is the same as the contents of that cell. For example:

If we said to Excel “B3 plus 8” Excel would understand this to be the same as “6 plus 8”. This use of cell references can be extended to a selection or range of cells such as:

A1:C1

We can see in the example above that we have three cells selected. We would refer to this as the range A1:C1, using the colon “:” to separate the two ends of the selection.

A1:A5

The above example would be referred to as the range A1:A5. A range can also contain a block of cells:

B2:C5

In this example the range starts from the top left cell B2 and goes to the bottom right cell in the selection, C5.

{{OP Activity |

Selecting a range of cells

 * 1) Open Excel and left click in cell C7. Instead of letting go of the left mouse button, keep it clicked down, and move the mouse right and down. As you do this you will see the selected range of cells expand and appear to follow the mouse.
 * 2) Highlight cell C7 and move your mouse left and up. What happens?}}

Quiz: range names
For each question, choose the correct range being referred to. The first one has been done for you:

Question 1

Answer: A1:C6

Okay, now it's your turn...