Opening an AppleWorks Spreadsheet

Open AppleWorks and choose Spreadsheet from the New Document Window.
The spreadsheet is organized into cells with letters for column headings and numbers for row headings.
Click in the cell in the top, left corner. You'll notice that cell A1 is surrounded by the highlight color. Its location is also indicated for you in the Address Box.

In cell A1, enter these words: Ticker Symbol
The Entry Bar reveals what you are typing. Press Return and notice what appears in cell A1.
In a spreadsheet, you enter numbers, words and formulas in cells, but the data is not accepted until you press Return or Enter. You may also click on the green check to accept the data.
Save your spreadsheet in the appropriate folder on the server. File => Save As... is the typical procedure for a first-time save. After that, use Command S.

Building the Spreadsheet

In cell B1, enter Corporation. Press Tab and notice that AppleWorks highlights the next cell to the right and accepts your entry. You may edit your entry in the Entry Bar by highlighting and/or deleting just as you would in word processing.
Enter "Number of Shares" in cell C1 and press Tab.
Enter "July 6 Price" in cell D1 and press Tab.
Enter "Current Price" in E1 and press Tab.
Enter "Total Cost" in F1 and press Tab.
Enter "Total Value" in G1 and press Tab.
Enter "Difference" in H1 and press Tab.
Enter "Percent Change" in I1 and press Tab.
Row 1 should look like this.

As an example, enter AMZN in cell A2. This is the ticker symbol for Amazon.com. In cell B2 enter Amazon.com.
In cell C2 enter 15, for example, and let's make up a price for July 6 - say 119. Enter that price in cell D2.
The Current price will be the daily closing price after July 6. Let's enter 125 in cell E2. These last two entries are simply guesses because we obviously don't know the closing values for July 6 and beyond.

Cell F2 will have a formula in it that multiplies the value in C2 times the value in D2. That will give you the July 6 cost. We'll do a similar thing with the Total Value in G2.
Click in F2 and enter an equal sign. That tells AppleWorks that a formula is about to be entered.
Next, simply click in cell C2, click the * key (that's the multiplication sign) and click in cell D2. Then click the green check to enter that formula or press Return.

Let's do the same for cell G2, only we will multiply cell C2 by E2 to get the total value in G2.

Now we'll add a quick calculation of the difference between the Total Cost and Total Value.
In cell H2, enter and equal sign and then click in cell G2. Click the - key (subtraction sign) and then click in cell F2. Press Return or click the green check to accept the formula.

Finally, we will have AppleWorks calculate a quick percent for us. In cell I2, enter an equal sign. Click in cell H2 and click the / key (division sign). Then click in cell F2 and go to Format => Number... Percent or press the percent button on the Tool Bar .

We need to format our cells that have dollar amounts in them.
Click and drag from cell D2 to H2. This highlights those cells.
Select Format => Number... in the Menu Bar. Choose currency from the list of choices and press OK.
Notice your cells are now in currency format.
There is a little trick you can do with spreadsheets to copy data and formulas to other rows. It's called "Fill Down" or "Fill Right". It saves a lot of time.
Click in cell A2 and drag to cell I 10. This selects all those cells. Select Calculate => Fill Down (Command D).
Notice that your spreadsheet is remarkably the same through row 10. Now all you need to do is change the corporation, number of shares, and prices, and AppleWorks will do your calculations for you.

You need to total Column F because you may not spend more than $10,000. Click in cell F 13.
Enter this formula: =sum(

Once you have this, click in cell F2 and drag down to F 11. Place the right parenthesis on the end of your formula and click the green check or press Return.
Format cell F 13 to currency (Format => Number... Currency), and you're ready to enter real time data.

Yahoo Finance will allow you to locate the names of companies and their ticker symbols.

Research several stocks on the NASDAQ market and enter current data. Remember, however, that these prices are not the ones you will use on Tuesday. Your buying price will be as of the close of the market on July 6, 1999. We will add current prices on a daily basis. Enjoy the project.