Information Technology & Systems

SUMMARY: Application software enables users to perform operations without writing any code. The most common application softwares are word processors, spreadsheets, presentation graphics software, and databases.

Word processors are used for writing, editing, formatting, saving and printing documents while typewriters are available to do similar tasks, Word processing software is more useful since it serves more than one purpose, i.e., writing, editing and modifying documents.

A spreadsheet is a collection of worksheets. In spreadsheets, data is presented in tabular form, which makes it easy to perform mathematical calculations and apply formulas to values.

Spreadsheets have all the formatting features that are available in word processing and additional formats like date, currency, etc. Spreadsheets also allow users to sort and filter data based on the specified conditions. There are two types of filters in Excel: AutoFilter and Advanced Filter.

In spreadsheets, there are three types of cell referencing: absolute, relative, and mixed. The capability to use formula and functions is a very useful feature of spreadsheets. Excel allows the users to perform nine different types of functions.

These are financial, date & time, mathematical & trigonometrical, statistical, lookup & reference, database, text, logical, and information functions. Excel also provides an Analysis ToolPak which allows the users to carry out complex statistical analyses.

Spreadsheet graphs can be used for making bar charts, line charts, pie charts and column charts. Excel allows its users to protect the worksheets, cells, workbooks, and the files by providing various levels of protection.

These include worksheet level protection, cell protection, workbook level protection, and file level protection.

Some of the advanced features of spreadsheets are PivotTable, macros, and what-if analysis. In the section on presentation graphics, we learnt about slide presentations and how graphic tools can be used to make effective presentations.

We also learnt about the output options, templates, view options, and slide options.