cjrrussell wrote...
I've got no problems doing the work and im not asking for the answer!!

The problem i am having is expressing the answer in excel. I have very
little experience with using functions in excel.

I know that if i get a zero on the leading diagonal the i need to
rearrange the rows, but how i tell excel to do this is where im
struggling.

None of the rest of us know the extent to which this is just a
mathematical exercise or a spreadsheet modeling exercise. If it's the
former, then unless your instructor is a fool, s/he'll be willing to
discuss this sort of Excel implementation issue with you. If the
latter, then it really is up to you to figure out.

That said, the general way to check for zero in the i,i entry in a
matrix M would be

INDEX(M,i,i)=0

and the general way to find the first row j i with a nonzero entry in
the i_th column would be

MATCH(1,(ROW(M)-ROW(INDEX(M,1,1))=i)*(INDEX(M,0,i)<0),0)

Note that a formula containing this expression would need to be entered
as an array formula, holding down [Ctrl] and [Shift] keys before
pressing [Enter].