For the purposes of this article, we'll be focusing on Microsoft Excel, since this is the most widely used spreadsheet software. However, nearly all of these skills and features are useful in LibreOffice and Google Drive. We'll make notes when necessary to highlight the differences between the suites.
15 comments:
Excel has been in my life off and on for several years. That said, I have never attempted to move beyond using the program for organization and fairly simple calculations. Perhaps it would be a stretch to consider myself a “casual spreadsheet enthusiast,” but I can dream! While some of the tips in this article do not seem to apply to my (much) older version of Excel – at least not on my 6am first attempts – I am encouraged to explore my outdated version further. And I have bookmarked this article to later review the linked video tutorials. Woo hoo!
Excel and other spreadsheet programs can do so much people don't realize. Spreadsheet ca perform many complex operations and can be an invaluable resource for interpreting data, such as large quantities for financial data. The biggest thing with excel is the time it takes to setup some of the more complex features, at least at first. My biggest takeaway from this article is excel forms, I did not realized they existed! I wonder if I can use them to help save time for some of my treasurer work?
Although I would argue most of these are basic skills for the younger crowd, they are definitely important tools. Excel has changed in function, I think, over the last 10 years, favoring more complex math and functions, over functioning as a database. Don't get me wrong, it still does both, but learning to use functions and math and macros is the key to Excel as a whole because that's what it's being bred to do. I would guess that 90% of the time if you just want a simple database display, there is software out there that'll do it better, but if you want to manipulate your data, you can't beat Excel.
I think that Access is a more useful program for form creation and implementation than Excel. Many of the suggestions in this article are either so basic they aren't really helpful or so specific and obscure the typical user wouldn't need them. I think it could be organized in a more informative way than random bits of information. I think the article should be rewritten, this time considering what audience it intends to benefit.
Before staring PTM, I had never used Excel before and I was honestly a tiny bit terrified to start. This article has clearly articulated the information that David B. has presented his students in basic PTM. I like having the written steps in front of me when working, for its easy to reference in reducers the percentage of error. I also found the new information to her helpful for future Excel assignments. Pivot plots, Macros and Scripts, and sorting data were all new skills that the article has taught me that I will try to incorporate into future assignments.
First of all, I love the title of this article, I totally think of Holcomb as a spreadsheet Ninja. I am saving this article, thank you for posting it comment gods. We were talking about the different calendar programs in PRM and I honestly think excel for the win because there is so much that can be done in the program and so much to learn that could make someone a crazy ninja. I did not know that there was a window in which to enter information instead of just straight into the cell. Learning something new everyday.
I love this article. It shows the basic skills one needs to utilize Excel effectively.
Personally, I leave excel open on my computer most of the time, if nothing else than for use as a desk calculator. Excel is excellent for quickly expanding matrices and doing lots of repetitive calculations.
I agree with Michael that Access is superior for form creation, but when only a simple 2 axis spreadsheet is required, Excel can tackle the task much more easily.
I do more work in Excel then I do in Word or Powerpoint.
This article covers a lot of basic skills that I already know how to do, but it also gets in to some features that I have known about in the past but never used. For example I have never actually used the macro features, even though I have often needed them and have always known about them. Now that I have read a close up explanation of how this tool works I think I will find my self actually using it in the future. I wish that this article talked more about why it is so important to take advantage of these more advanced features. I find that most people do not use formulas even though they know how to. If they did use formulas It would be much easier for me to work with spread sheets that they created. I also wish that this article spent a little more time talking about different types of graphs.
The first and last tasks are completely mind-blowing. I cannot even imagine using the forms for some of our assignments for PTM. It would make everything 10 times more efficient. That combined with having Excel perform repetitive tasks for me, I would be set for life. I've seen these tasks done with Google documents but never with excel which has multiple functions that Google just doesn't have yet. I cannot wait to apply these to my future assignments
I'm a big fan of Excel, and I think it's definitely the most powerful program in the Microsoft office suite. It can do tons of simple things, but a lot of the time people overlook just how complex it can get. I use it a lot for math and functions, and there are definitely times where I wish I knew more about the program. This list of things you can do was really interesting, and I'm definitely going to start playing around with some of these concepts. Now that we've moved to using Excel in Basic PTM I feel like this article will be a great resource for us.
I hadn't really played with spreadsheets too much since learning about them in elementary school until last summer. Last summer, though, I pushed my knowledge of spreadsheets heavily and learned a lot about various kinds of spreadsheet operations and conditionals that allowed me to do all kinds of really cool things. Since then I have tried to make my spreadsheets much more powerful and have used them for tasks I wouldn't have considered them for 8 months ago.
I thought this article was really clear and informative. It covered a lot of what people consider basic Excel skills but also spoke about some of the more advanced functions within those key skills. The directions were really clear and in some cases suggested simpler ways to use certain functions. Excel is a great resource for organizing and interpreting data and this article definitely highlights many ways to use it to its full potential.
Every time I have to work in excel I wish I was taking PRM. There are so many things that I know are possible in excel but I cant figure out how to do them. Normally I would just ask the internet but there are surprisingly few tutorials for excel past the basic usage and the tutorials that are there are usually hard to find. So now I have managed to find out how to do at least a few more things in excel and one that I get to use immediately.
Yikes, I would hope that in this day and age spreadsheets are not actually that mystifying. I think that basic knowledge of Excel or a similar piece of software should be a must for pretty much any college student. I'm not saying that I'm a spreadsheet ninja or anything, but I would argue that the value in being competent with this kind of software is just too important to pass up. In high school, I had to use Excel a lot for science labs and statistics, which was definitely a trial by fire experience. Looking back, I'm glad I got that experience, because it has definitely come in handy during my time thus far at CMU.
I really enjoyed reading this article because I use Excel quite often and several of these features I did not know existed, or if I did, I did not know how to accomplish. A few of their tips seemed particularly useful. I like the way they explain sorting because I can often imagine myself entering data in a fairly mixed order based on when i think of it or receive it and then being able to sort it into a coherent order for later processing. I also liked the form tool. It reminds me of attributed blocks in autocad and similar things in access, and i feel like it could be very useful for similar processes.
Post a Comment