Have you ever had a subject that made you shiver in your shoes? Glazed eyes with fear or excitement? This mission is one of the most important ones, equipping you with skills to work with and manage information and data (which makes some Control agents tremble). What sort of data? Do you have a collection of any sort, like a music collection, comic books, characters, cards...? Wouldn't it be helpful if you had a record of each one of the items in your collection, and you could sort it by any field (recording artist, title of the song, name of the comic, character name and type, year created? These are all examples of data that can be entered in a field). In this Mission you will be learning all about a tool which helps you manage your data (enter data, track, order, graph, chart, plan parties, budget your money, and much more).

What is a Spreadsheet?

Step 1.  CLICK HERE   to find out what a spreadsheet is!

Step 2.  CLICK HERE  to learn basic spreadsheet vocabulary.  

If you went to the two links you noticed that a program called Microsoft Excel was used in the examples.  Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program that can be used to create spreadsheets.  Microsoft Excel is very similar to Google Spreadsheets that we will be using in Google Drive.

Special Note to Agents: If you don't have access to Google Spreadsheets you can do these Quest activities using an application such as: Microsoft Excel, Calcin OpenOffice, iWork (Mac Suite), Free Spreadsheet or Numbers (iPad). The process is very similar across all of the applications.

Quest 1: The Story Begins! 
Imagine that you are going to have a celebration and you will be inviting people to your party.  You could use a spreadsheet to keep track of who you invited and how many people are coming.  The spreadsheet will do the calculations for you and help you to stay organized.  Proceed to Quest 1 to begin with the Party Planner Spreadsheet where you will learn how to name a document & enter data, learn the difference between a cell, row, and column.