Appendix B. Setting Up and Editing a Spreadsheet

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One of the benefits of using Excel spreadsheets to solve management science problems is that spreadsheets provide a nice medium for visual presentation. They enable the user to customize the problem presentation in any manner or format desired. However, problems and models do not just "appear" on spreadsheets as they do in this book without some careful editing. The purpose of this brief appendix is to review some of the steps required to set up and edit spreadsheets like the ones shown in this book.

Virtually all the spreadsheet editing functions and tools can be accessed directly from the toolbars at the top of the spreadsheet window. Exhibit B.1 shows our Excel spreadsheet originally shown in Exhibit 3.4 in Chapter 3 with the solution to the Beaver Creek Pottery Company linear programming example. We will describe the Excel editing features as they apply to this example spreadsheet. If you have not read Chapter 3 yet, don't worry; it's not necessary to know how to solve a linear programming problem in order to understand the spreadsheet editing tools.