Evaluating Data with the Status Bar

Available Files

The following files are available for download:

Download Exercise Files

The ManagingMyData workbook contains a worksheet named, Employees. This worksheet is a list of employees with their ID number, name, hire date, salary, region, and address information. Before looking at some data entry techniques, you can learn more about your data with a quick look of the data set using the status bar evaluations tool. Excel automatically summarizes selected data and displays the results in the status bar. By default, Excel shows the average, count, and sum of any selected cells, but this can be customized.

By focusing on the the current salary information in Column E, you can take a look at the status bar to see what information is available.

To begin the selection,

Click cell E2

To select the remaining salary data using a keyboard shortcut, type:

Control key + Shift key + down arrow

Cells E2:E45 are selected.

1. Look in the lower right-hand corner of the status bar:

The status bar can be customized to show many other Excel features. Take a moment to explore these.

To see other calculations and status bar options,
Right-Click the status bar
To add minimum and maximum calculations,

Click Minimum, Click Maximum

To dismiss the menu,
Click away from the menu

To deselect the Salary data,

Click any cell

Evaluating Data with the Status Bar

Available Files

Step 1. Select all salaries in column E.

Step 2. Examine calculations (average, count, sum) in the status bar.

Step 3. Add other calculations.

Step 4. Deselect the Salary data.