Worksheet — rows, columns, cell and cell address; range of cells (row, column, row & column range)

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. In a cinema hall, seat B3 means row B, seat three, and you find it in seconds. A worksheet uses the same idea for every box. Today we will learn worksheets, rows, columns, cells, cell addresses and ranges of cells.

A worksheet is one page of a spreadsheet file. It is a single sheet of rows and columns inside a Calc file. A new Calc file starts with one sheet, named Sheet 1. You can add more sheets with the plus button near the sheet tabs. To rename a sheet, right-click its tab and choose Rename Sheet.

Think of a register with many pages. The workbook is the whole Calc file, saved with the .ods extension. A worksheet is one page inside that file. For example, a class teacher can keep Term 1, Term 2 and Final marks as three sheets in one file.

Every worksheet is made of rows and columns. A row is a line of boxes running from left to right, and rows are named by numbers, one, two, three. A column runs from top to bottom, and columns are named by letters, A, B, C. After column Z, names use two letters, so the next columns are A A, A B and A C.

A worksheet is huge. It has over ten lakh rows, numbered from one to ten lakh forty eight thousand five hundred seventy six. It also has thousands of columns, far more than any school project needs. Try this: on an empty column, press Ctrl plus the down arrow key to jump to the last row.

Now the most important word. A cell is the box where a row and a column meet. Each cell holds one entry, which can be a number, some text or a formula. The active cell is the cell you have selected, and it has a thick dark border around it.

Every cell has a unique name called its cell address, also called a cell reference. It is the column letter followed by the row number. Column B and row three give the address B3. Column A and row one give A1, the first cell of every sheet. Column D and row ten give D10. Column A B and row five give A B five.

Remember these rules for cell addresses. The column letter always comes first, then the row number. So B3 is correct, and 3B is wrong, a common exam mistake. The Name Box, at the left of the formula bar, shows the address of the active cell. You can also type an address in the Name Box and press Enter to jump straight to that cell.

Often we work with many cells together, like all the marks of one subject. A range is a group of cells that sit next to each other. It is written as the first cell, a colon, then the last cell. So A1 colon A5 means all cells from A1 to A5. To select a range, drag the mouse from the first cell to the last cell.

There are three kinds of range. A column range has cells from only one column, like B2 colon B6, which is five cells going down. A row range has cells from only one row, like B2 colon F2, which is five cells going across. A row and column range covers many rows and many columns, like B2 colon D4. It forms a rectangle block of nine cells.

Let us use a class marks sheet with forty students and five subjects. Column B holds Maths, so B2 colon B41 is a column range with forty Maths marks. Row two holds Riya's marks, so B2 colon F2 is a row range with her five marks. B2 colon F41 is a row and column range. It holds all two hundred marks of the class.

Exams often ask how many cells a range has. Multiply the number of columns by the number of rows. In A1 colon C4, the columns are A, B and C, so three, and the rows are one to four, so four. Three times four gives twelve cells. Pause and predict: how many cells are in B2 colon E3? Columns B to E are four, rows two to three are two, so eight cells.

Let us revise what we learned today. A worksheet is one sheet of rows and columns inside a Calc file. Rows are named by numbers and columns by letters. A cell address is the column letter followed by the row number, like B3. A range is written as the first cell, a colon, and the last cell. There are three kinds of range: column range, row range, and row and column range. Open Calc and select each kind of range yourself.