Continuing from what we have left off from the last Word table discussion forum, I have mentioned that I am not particularly a fan of creating tables in Word. Instead, I would highly prefer doing it in Excel. Similarly, I have mentioned that Excel’s biggest advantages over Word are cell consistencies, the ability to perform calculations and write functions, and conditional formatting. With that said, let us elaborate a bit in detail as to precisely what they do. As previously mentioned, Word is a word processing and error-catching piece of software, so it was inherently designed to be more cautious with user input. Therefore, in a Word document, the software will try its best to catch every possible issue or exception they see and prompt the user for change with little to no regard for the user’s original intentions. It was there for one purpose and one purpose in mind: catching errors. On the other hand, Excel is much more forgiving, and it tends to trust the user’s input to a greater extent. Therefore, Excel relies on the user to provide every single input, from a simple unit of measurement upwards to a particular width or height of any given cell. Due to this flexibility, the user could exhibit total control of how the data is displayed, reducing printing and formatting nightmares that come naturally with Word. Because with Word, it will try to readjust the cell automatically depending on the user’s input. More often than not, these automatic adjustments are likely not what the user wants. The next advantage is the ability to write functions and formulas. Quite frankly, this is simply functionality that does not exist with Word. With functions and custom formulas, Excel allows you to perform numerical calculations and concatenation with other cells, provided that they are of the same data type. This function is proven to be highly beneficial when it comes to accounting and sales functions. In my past work functions, I would perform monthly, quarterly, and annual reports for our stakeholders. Some of these reports would require me to pull back-end sales, return, service, and purchasing data in a CSV, comma-delimited, or comma-separated file format files. Once I pull those files, I usually filter out the data that I need from a particular date range and clean the data for inconsistency. Then I will set them up for calculation to either use the built-in functions, write my own custom formulas, depending on what I am analyzing at that time, or throw the sets of data in a pivot table and move some columns around to get different analytical results using the same data sets. All of which are proven to be vastly efficient time savers. Lastly, when it comes to conditional formatting, it is instrumental if you are working with a large data set and trying to isolate a particular data set for processing. This pre-processing data cleaning is critical if you would like your results to be as accurate as possible. It is also quite beneficial if you are trying to present your report to your stakeholders and you are using a pre-made template because conditional formatting, just like its name, formats the cell in the way you defined it previously based on a particular set of conditions. Last but not least, as promised, attached below is a visual copy of my own academic planner just to show you how powerful excel really is and what it is capable of doing.

Responses to the professor or other students:

Response One:

That’s great. I genuinely feel that the best exposure that one can have to refine their excel skills is to either work in an accounting or data analytical position. Quite frankly, I was exposed to excel functions very early into my career because I had to keep track of an office supplies inventory. However, it was not until I worked in the real estate and e-commerce industry that I started to massively incorporate excel spreadsheets into my daily work routines. When you are able to present your insight to your stakeholders that no one else was able to present, it really provides you with a sense of accomplishment. 

Response Two:

I really enjoyed your mention of using it to calculate travel expenses with friends. I actually had a similar experience with excel, but it was with a group of colleagues. We would occasionally eat out and order boba at the office. I remember that I set up a google spreadsheet to automatically calculate each person’s fair share of contributions that no one ever contested because it was accurate down to cents. 😂