There are quite a few people who think that they don’t need to learn Microsoft Excel. It is an extremely powerful tool that can seem intimidating. Here are some of the ways it can be used:
1. Lists – If you use Microsoft Word to create tables and they are large and fill the page, or you have had to switch to Normal view because they overflow the page, then Microsoft Excel is an option. Think of Excel as one big table. It simply has more than 200 columns and more than 32,000 rows (much more depending on the version, Excel 2003 has 65,536 rows). You can easily create a contact list and sort it by multiple columns or rows, even using a custom list to create a custom sort. With the new table format or the old automatic format, you can format your list quickly and change the format even faster.
2. Timesheets – If you need to keep track of your time, timesheets are a useful tool, especially since when you enter a start time and end time, you can also have a calculation that will calculate the total hours and minutes spent. . Then for the total, a simple sum will add them all together and by formatting the sum to show accumulated time, you can have a time greater than 24 hours. For example, if your timesheet totals 40 hours, your sum will not show 40 hours but 16 hours because the time is in 24 hour increments and you would like to add one day for every 24 hours. Cumulative time allows you to display all time without adding days. This is done by changing the format of the total time to [hh]The :mm brackets tell Microsoft Excel to display the accumulated time.
3. Invoices – As with timesheets, this is a great way to invoice clients if you don’t have specific billing software. I would use Microsoft Excel instead of Microsoft Word, why? Because Microsoft Excel can easily calculate totals and taxes.
3. Projections: These are good for both business people and personal use. For business projections you can use for sales, costs and expenses, the list can go on. I create projections for quite a lot, how much training will you do per person, how many people do I need to attend a training course to break even, etc. For personal you can create projections for special events like weddings and family parties. Vacations are my favorite, you can find out how much you can save each month and then create a table for different vacation packages and calculate how much money you will have to spend on each one.
4. Cash Flow – This is something everyone should calculate, but how many of us actually do? Basic Excel skills will create a fantastic cash flow spreadsheet where you can enter how much you spend on items monthly, yearly, and quarterly. The spreadsheet will then calculate how much of your salary you need to pay all your expenses and how much you have left as spending money. There are many templates you can download from the internet to do this, Microsoft Office Online has some that are free.
5. Scenarios – This could be confused with Projections, but by projections I mean calculations in a spreadsheet, by scenarios I mean the built-in scenarios feature. You create a spreadsheet, let’s say a cash flow. If you’re looking for a new job or trying to see what your cash flow would be like with different salaries, you can create a scenario for each salary amount. When you want to see what one would look like, you can display it and the entire spreadsheet will update. You can create a scenario report that shows what it all looks like in a table or in a PivotTable report.
If you think you’d like to use Microsoft Excel in one of these ways but aren’t sure how, then consider taking a training course. When looking for a training course and you want to learn how to use the software in a particular way, ask them which course will do that; if in doubt, if you need more basic training to develop your knowledge to a more advanced level, ask to speak to one of the trainers, they should be able to find out how much you know and what courses you will need to learn what you need.
