List of Top 12 Important Uses of Microsoft Excel
Steps for Adding the Forms Feature in Excel. We can add the FORM in excel by customizing the ribbon. In order to add the Form to the Home tab, follow the below steps. Step 1 – Go to the File menu and Choose Option. Step 2 – We will get the below dialogue box as shown below. Next, choose the Customize Ribbon. Step 3 – We will get the. MS Excel is used for a range of purposes in a business including accounting, stock management, sales reporting, product information management and automation. So, if you’re wondering why Excel is so important, it can power a whole business!
There are plenty of uses of excel, and the list goes on, but here we have listed some of the important uses of Microsoft excel to start the things for a beginner.
- Get Quick Totals
- Data Analysis and Interpretation
- Plenty of Formulas to Work with Data
- Data Organising and Restructuring
- Data Filtering
- Flexible and User-Friendly
- Online Access
- Building Dashboards
- and Graphs
- Dynamic Formulas
- Automation Through Excel
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Feb 26, 2011 People have used Excel for all sorts of purposes, from teaching pilots their way around a Boeing 747 to creating clip art. Although other programs perform such specialized tasks more quickly. Once the data is stored in a systematic way, it can be used easily for multiple purposes. MS Excel makes it easier to implement various operations on the data through various tools that it possesses. Uses of Microsoft Excel: Excel tools make your work easier.
Now let us discuss each of them in detail along with an Example –
#1 – Get Quick Totals
Getting the grand total or is a common task, so excel provides a quick sum of numbers with its Auto Sum option. For example, look at the below data in excel.
We have monthly numbers above, so to get the quick total in cell B7, simply press the Auto key ALT + = sign.
As you can see, it has inserted the SUM function in excel. Hit the enter key to get the result.
There you go. We have a quick total of the numbers above.
#2 – Data Analysis & Interpretation
The spreadsheet contains data, so telling the story behind the data is what the decision-makers need to make decisions that are vital in the business world. So when the data is available with excel, we can make use of MS Excels features like and formulas to quickly analyses the data and interpret the numbers quickly and efficiently.
#3 – Plenty of Formulas to Work with Data
MS Excel comes with plenty of built-in functions to work with data. There are 450+ so these functions are categorized as “Financial, Logical, Text, Date & Time, Lookup & Reference, Math & Trig, Statistical, Engineering, Cube, Information, and Web.
#4 – Data Organizing & Restructuring
You cannot get the data that is ready to use, so using tools of excel, we can organize the data, and in fact, we can reorganize the data according to the needs of the users.
#5 – Data Filtering
Using the option of Filter in Excel, we can filter the particular data from the number of rows of data. Not only a single column filter can be applied, but also we can apply the filter to multiple columns to to filter the data.
#6 – Goal Seek Analysis
When the target is set, and at a certain stage of the project, we may need to review that target achievement. So using excel, we can track all those things and also identify what needs to do in the remaining steps to achieve the desired goals.
#7 – Flexible and User-Friendly
When you compare MS Excel with other spreadsheets, you will find MS Excel as relatively friendly and flexible enough to fit in the needs of the users. One needs to have the proper training to get start the things in excel.
#8 – Online Access
Not all the time, we get he done offline, so some of the data needs to be fetched from online websites as well. We can import data from “MS Access File, Text File, From Web, From SQL Servers, From XML Data Import” etc.… So getting the data to excel is not a constraint.
#9 – Building Dashboards
When the story behind the data is read to tell, end users may want to see those summary results in a single page view, so using MS Excel, we can build dashboards that can tell the stories in a single page view. Not only can we build a dashboard, but it also makes the dashboard interactive as well.
#10 – and Graphs
Charts and Graphs can attract user attention, so using MS Excel. We can build interactive charts and graphs to tell the story better than the summary tables alone.
Excel Is Used For What Purposes Test
#11 – Dynamic Formulas
When the are applied, we can make them dynamic so that when the data range gets an addition or deletion, our formula shows the updated results instantly.
#12 – Automation Through Excel
At last, when you move to the advanced level of MS Excel, you may get bored with daily routine works in excel. In that case, we can automate the reports in excel by language.
Recommended Articles
This has been a guide to Uses of Excel. Here we discuss the top 12 important uses of Microsoft Excel that include Get Quick Totals, Data Analysis & Interpretation, Plenty of Formulas to Work with Data, Data Filtering, etc. along with examples and downloadable excel template. You may learn more about excel from the following articles –
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Microsoft Excel spreadsheets hold more than a million rows of data and automate number crunching, but they can do so much more. Excel’s simple interface lends itself to uses well beyond those that its designers ever imagined.
People have used Excel for all sorts of purposes, from teaching pilots their way around a Boeing 747 to creating clip art.
Although other programs perform such specialized tasks more quickly, accurately, and effectively, faithful Excel users often spurn those options, preferring to use the spreadsheet program they know rather than unfamiliar software.
If you’re in business, Excel is likely one of your day-to-day productivity tools. Maybe after reading about creative ways other people have used Microsoft’s spreadsheet application, you’ll look at its potential for your work in a new light.
Word Processing
At one end of the range of possible uses for Excel is its role as a word processor. This use isn’t terribly uncommon; you may even know someone who does this. Although a dedicated word processor offers far superior tools, you can still write a letter or short document in Excel, either by merging and enlarging cells to use for the text or by placing the content in a text box.
Writing letters, however, is comparatively simple compared with what Debbie Gewand can create in Excel. She uses the program to create clip-art images, and she wrote a book showing how she does it. Gewand takes photos that she has scanned into Excel as references, and then draws them as clip art by assembling lots of filled shapes made with Excel’s drawing tools. She has also used Excel to create two-page brochures and business cards. Her Website showcases a grab bag of unusual cases.
Behind the Cockpit
At Red Triangle, Todd Michael Edwards uses Excel to provide training for pilots around the world on planes ranging from regional jets to Boeing 747s. His company’s cockpit mockups, created as Excel worksheets, show diagrams of the switches and indicators. The worksheets utilize comment boxes, which within cells provide pop-up details of what the lights and indicators do and what their different states mean.
It’s a simple learning aid that can run on just about any computer and requires only an Excel viewer application to use, not the Microsoft program itself.
Track Leads, Build Software, and Analyze Data
Some users have found novel applications for Excel that harness its power for business. Photographer Leeann Marie created a marketing worksheet in Excel to track her photography leads and their conversion into actual shoots. This lead-tracking sheet features a data-collection worksheet and a series of PivotTables that analyze the data and provide summarized information about referral sources, failed leads, booking rates, and other details. You can find this worksheet as a free download from her Website.
Excel Is Used For What Purposes For A
Other users, such as Purna Duggirala, harness Excel’s power to prototype user interfaces. He takes advantage of the application’s structure to lay out a design, and he also puts Excel’s drawing and form tools to good use in the mockups
Excel has always been a good tool for analyzing information created elsewhere. You can use it to analyze data from a range of sources by first importing or linking the data from a data store and then displaying it in a format that’s easy to sort and summarize. If the links between Excel and the data are live, then changes or edits to the original data should update automatically in Excel. The Group, Filter, Consolidate, and PivotTable tools in Excel give plenty of options for summarizing the data to answer questions about your business.
With the advent of Office Web Apps, even small businesses that don’t operate a Sharepoint server can make use of the new multiuser authoring feature for Excel. For example, you can upload a budget or other worksheet prepared in Excel to a Windows Live SkyDrive account and make it available for all interested parties to view and edit online, regardless of where they are. They can use the Excel Web App to make changes, and they don’t even need to have Excel installed to use it. This is a feature that Google Spreadsheets has offered for some time, and it’s sure to be a welcome addition for business users of Excel.
Just for Fun
Some novel uses for Excel are more for entertainment than work. One-time Excel expert Harald Staff created a Web radio player that plays inside an Excel worksheet. You can see it at work by downloading the file from Contextures.com. Simply click one of the listed stations to play it.
Other users have found a practical solution for being caught on a holiday without dice by writing a simple random number formula in an Excel cell to simulate dice rolls.
Not Everything Goes Excel’s Way
When it comes to interesting uses for spreadsheets, Google Spreadsheets has some tricks up its sleeve that even Excel doesn’t offer. One of these is the capability to create maps with data that’s stored in a worksheet through a Google Gadget. (Coincidentally, a similar feature was available in Excel 2000 and earlier versions; however, it was subsequently removed and became the stand-alone application Microsoft MapPoint.)
In Google Spreadsheets you start by adding data listed by region, using ISO country codes or U.S. state codes. The codes go in the leftmost column; in subsequent columns, you add the data to show on the map, one column for each map. You then insert the Heatmap gadget, select the data, and choose the map to use–the data will be plotted as colors on the map.
You can also make use of a map gadget to show, for instance, where your business offices or distributors of your products are located, by marking them on a Google Map. To do so, place the address to map in one column and any tooltip text to display when the user hovers their mouse over that location in the adjacent column. You then insert the map gadget and select the cells containing the data. At any time, if the data in the worksheet is updated, the map will redraw automatically. Combine this flexibility with the capability to publish a Google Spreadsheet to the Web, and you have a great tool for providing location-based business information in a graphical way.
Yet another feature of Google Spreadsheets that you can harness for business use–and has no direct parallel in Excel–is the Form feature, which allows you to create a form inside a spreadsheet to collect data from a user. You might use it for an invitation for which you’re collecting replies, for example, or a customer survey form.
Once you have created the form, which can contain multiple-choice questions, checkboxes, and the like, you publish it to the Web. As users complete the form, the data is automatically added to the spreadsheet, allowing you to aggregate data from surveys or to gather replies to an invitation all in one place and without your input. (Although you can create a form in Excel, it offers you no simple way to publish it online and automatically collect the data.)
A Word of Caution
Not all the uses to which people put Excel–or Google Spreadsheets, for that matter–are ideal for the application. Most users who explore unusual purposes with the software do so because they are repurposing the Excel skills they already have to do their work. If you were planning to manage your finances, do your taxes, or create brochures, your tool of choice in most cases should be a dedicated application.
Tax preparation software, for example, will offer more features than you can build into a worksheet, and it will be updated regularly as laws change. Overall you’ll generally benefit from using specialized software, because the features you will need will be baked in and you won’t spend time rebuilding something that already exists.