Happy Birthday, Excel!

Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on 30 September 1985. Excel was one of the first spreadsheets to use a graphical interface with pull down menus and a point and click capability using a mouse pointing device. The Excel spreadsheet with a graphical user interface was easier for most people to use than the command line interface of DOS spreadsheet products, like Lotus 1-2-3. Many people bought Apple Macintoshes so that they could use the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program. When Microsoft launched the Windows operating system in 1987, Excel 2.0 was one of the first application products released for it.

Get "Click Happy"

"Click Happy" is a term I use with people to describe my unconscious clicking of everything. I see something, and I must click on it. Sometimes once, other times twice or more. I get this from my use of clicking to select things in Microsoft Word. There are a bunch of shortcuts to select in Word, and most options work in many other application programs as well. Here they are, and happy clicking!

To select this	Click this
A character	Drag across the letter
A word	Double-click
A line	Move the pointer to the left of the line until you see the left-pointing arrow, and then click
A sentence	CTRL–click anywhere in the sentence
A paragraph	Triple-click the paragraph OR Move the pointer to the left of the paragraph until you see the left-pointing arrow and double-click
Multiple paragraphs	Move the pointer to the left of the paragraphs until you see the left-pointing arrow, and then click and drag up or down
A large block of text	Click at the start of the selection, scroll to the end of the selection, and  SHIFT-click
Entire document	Move the pointer to the left of any of the document text until you see the left-pointing arrow, and then triple-click
A vertical block of text	Hold  ALT , and then drag over the text