1.2 Entering data so it stays usable
Excel treats your numbers as numbers and your dates as dates, every time.
Before:00. Getting Your FootingUnlocks:02. Excel — Formulas & Functions04. Excel — Cleaning & Power Query
Getting data into cells so that Excel understands it is a real skill, and this topic covers the difference between text, numbers and dates, along with AutoFill and Flash Fill for entering patterns quickly. It comes right after the grid because bad entry poisons every later step. The two classic traps are the leading zero that disappears from a phone number and the date typed the Indian way that Excel silently reads as something else. The one rule that pays for the whole topic is one thing per cell.
Work through these
Text, numbers, dates and the difference Excel cares about
Excel decides whether what you typed is text, a number or a date at the moment you type it. Everything afterwards depends on that decision. A number stored as text looks identical and behaves completely differently.
The leading-zero and Indian-date traps
Two traps catch almost everyone in India: leading zeros vanishing from identifiers, and day-month-year values being read as month-day-year. Both are fixable and both are far cheaper to avoid than to repair.
AutoFill, Flash Fill and custom lists
Filling a series, inferring a pattern from examples, and defining your own list are three ways to avoid typing repetitive data. The pattern-inferring one feels like magic and needs checking.
One thing per cell: the rule that saves every later step
Keeping one piece of information per cell is the rule that makes sorting, filtering, formulas and pivots possible later. Names combined into one cell are the classic violation and the classic regret.
Practice file
- xl-01-first-workbook.xlsx
A blank-ish workbook with an instructions sheet and a small list to type up. Navigation, entry and sheet handling.
Opens in Excel. Every name, number and address in these files is made up. No account needed to download.
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Links last checked 29 Aug 2026.
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