text: what is microsoft excel (xls)?   excel is the spreadsheet that comes with microsoft office.  a spreadsheet is, at its most basic, a grid of boxes where you can enter numbers and equations.  each box (called a cell) has a specific address, based on the row number and the column.  the first cell is a1, the one below it is a2, and the one to the right of it is b1.  pretty simple so far, right?  knowing no more than this, you can use excel as nothing more than a convenient editor for tabular data.  in fact, this is primarily what excel is for... except instead of just putting in tabular data it can also calculate the data for you.  here's an example:  i had a garage sale recently and recorded each sale in the spreadsheet. it was pretty simple.  (actually, i'm lying to you.  it was a complex spreadsheet that tracked a lot of different things like donor, category, and sales goals, but i'm simplifying it for this answer.  it could have been a simple spreadsheet).    in the 'a' column i listed the item that was sold.  in the b column i listed the price of the item.  a ways down the b column--say row 100--i put an equation in by typing "=sum(b1:b99)" which meant to add up all the numbers in the cells from b1 to b99.  now i had a functional spreadsheet that automatically updated the total sold so far.  any time i typed in a new purchase, bam!  there was the new total.  a lot easier than adding it up on paper, no?  this is basically what a spreadsheet is.  it can format numbers as percentages, dollar amounts, etc.  basic math works like "=a5+b6" or "=c12+10" and so forth--each cell's address can be treated as a variable in the equation, and you can type in literal numbers as well..  the more common equations (average, total, etc) have buttons for them on the top.  for the more advanced ones i usually recommend choosing "function" from the insert menu.  you'd be surprised what excel can do.  it's pretty simple on the surface, but has tremendous power beneath.    i hope this answered your question.  good luck to you.