Your First Data Entry
Type into a cell, press Enter, and you have started. A few habits from the beginning save hours later.
Start As You Mean to Go On
The way you lay out data in the first five minutes decides whether sorting, filtering and PivotTables will work later. One record per row, one field per column, one value per cell.
- Headings in row 1 — One per column
- One record per row — One customer, one row
- One value per cell — Never two things in one
How to do it
Click A1 ▸ type a heading ▸ Tab across ▸ Enter to start the next row
Do not leave blank rows inside your data. A blank row breaks sorting, filtering and Ctrl + A.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Row 1 | Headings, one per column |
| Row 2 onwards | One record per row |
| One value per cell | Never Name and Phone together |
| No blank rows | They break everything later |
A Correct Layout
Row 1 = headings · Row 2 onwards = records · no gaps, no merges
| Name | City | Phone | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arun | Chennai | 9876543210 | 48500 |
| Divya | Madurai | 9876500000 | 6200 |
| Karthik | Coimbatore | 9876511111 | 12750 |
| Meena | Salem | 9876522222 | 9400 |
Result: One per row
Get this right in the first five minutes and everything afterwards becomes easy.
Do this
- Put headings in row 1 and nothing above them
- Keep one record per row
- Leave no blank rows or merged cells
Avoid
- Putting a title in row 1 instead of headings
- Merging cells inside the data
- Leaving blank rows as separators
Practice
- Enter five records with headings in row 1.
- Sort them by amount and check nothing breaks.
- Add a blank row and watch Ctrl + A change.
- In row 1, with the headings pushed to row 2
- Better still, leave the data clean and put the title on a separate sheet or in the header
- Merged across row 1
Show answer
Keep row 1 as headings · put titles in the page header — Anything above the headings confuses sorting, filtering and PivotTables.
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