Do your budget with an online spreadsheet (Practice Sheets)

Step by step

1. Click the Start button! Look at the bottom of this practice computer: the dark strip there is its taskbar. In the middle of it, click the Start button (four blue squares). The main menu opens just above it. If you see two taskbars, use the one inside this page.
2. Click "Browser". In the menu that opened, click the "Browser" tile (a square with a small picture and its name under it): the app opens in its own window.
3. Go to sheets.practice.example. Type "sheets.practice.example" in the address bar then Enter: you land on Practice Sheets.
4. Create a "Blank spreadsheet". Click "＋ Blank spreadsheet".
5. Type "Bread", then its price. You are making a small shopping list: what you bought in column A, its price in column B. The first box, A1 (column A, row 1), is already outlined in blue, so you can type right away: type "Bread". Then press the Tab key (↹, on the left of the keyboard, above Caps Lock): the blue outline moves one box to the right, to B1. Type the price "1.20", then press Enter. (The box then shows 1.2: a spreadsheet drops the zero at the end, the price is the same.)
6. Type "Milk", then its price. Second line of your list. After Enter, the blue outline is on A2, under "Bread" (if it is somewhere else, click the box A2). Type "Milk", press Tab, type the price "0.95", then press Enter.
7. Let the spreadsheet add up the total. Click the box B3, just under the two prices. Type =SUM(B1:B2) exactly like that (no spaces), then press Enter. The box shows the total, 2.15: the spreadsheet added the prices for you.
8. Close this window. You are done with this window, so close it: click the ✕ button at the top right corner of the "Browser" window (on its title bar, the strip at the top). The window disappears.

These steps are written for SafePC, a pretend Windows-style computer in your web browser. On your own computer, the buttons and menus may look a little different, but the idea is the same.

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