Part I: Getting Started with Excel
The date examples in this book use the U.S. English system. Your Windows regional settings will affect the way Excel
interprets a date that you’ve entered. For example, depending on your regional date settings, June 1, 2019, may be
interpreted as text rather than a date. In such a case, you need to enter the date in a format that corresponds to your
regional date settings—for example, 1 June, 2019.For more information about working with dates, see Chapter 12, “Using Formulas with Dates and
Times.”Entering time values
When you work with times, you extend Excel’s date serial number system to include deci-
mals. In other words, Excel works with times by using fractional days. For example, the
date serial number for June 1, 2019, is 43617. Noon on June 1, 2019 (halfway through the
day), is represented internally as 43617.5 because the time fraction is added to the date
serial number to get the full date/time serial number.Again, you normally don’t have to be concerned with these serial numbers or fractional
serial numbers for times. Just enter the time into a cell in a recognized format. In this
case, type June 1, 2019 12:00.See Chapter 12 for more information about working with time values.Modifying Cell Contents
After you enter a value or text into a cell, you can modify it in several ways.■ (^) Delete the cell’s contents.
■ (^) Replace the cell’s contents with something else.
■ (^) Edit the cell’s contents.
You can also modify a cell by changing its formatting. However, formatting a cell affects only a cell’s appearance.
Formatting doesn’t affect the cell’s contents. Later sections in this chapter cover formatting.
Deleting the contents of a cell
To delete the contents of a cell, just click the cell and press the Delete key. To delete more
than one cell, select all of the cells that you want to delete and then press Delete. Pressing
Delete removes the cell’s contents but doesn’t remove any formatting (such as bold, italic,
or a different number format) that you may have applied to the cell.