Choose to Excel - Working With Spreadsheets
By Wayne Maruna
Most home computer users are familiar with word processing, the ability to type, correct, and format documents using a program like Microsoft Word. Word is one of the fundamental utilities built into the broader Microsoft Office package. There are many different versions of Office at different price points for different levels of users, but all Office versions come with Word and Excel. There are free alternatives to Microsoft Office, including LibreOffice and Open Office, and even Google Docs. Each of those includes clones of Word and Excel, among other utilities.
You’ve probably used Word, but have you ever dabbled with Excel? (LibreOffice and Open Office call their spreadsheet utilities ‘Calc’.) Excel is a ‘spreadsheet’ program. What is a spreadsheet? It is a tabular display of cells in a series of columns and rows. This may not sound very useful, but it can be incredibly powerful. If you’re not using a spreadsheet program, it is likely because either you don’t understand how it can be used, or you’ve been scared off by the learning curve, or you simply don’t have a sufficient need to push you to learn the program.
A single Excel file is called a workbook, and a workbook will consist of one or more worksheets, stacked one on top the other. A multi-sheet workbook can link cells from one sheet to another and even one workbook (file) to another. This means that as one cell gets changed, it can result in automatic changes to other cells and worksheets. Whereas Word documents are primarily textual in nature, Excel documents are typically though not exclusively numerical. Excel also has powerful charting and graphing capability.
In my working career, I was a plant and division controller, and I spent a good deal of my working day using Excel to create management reports, forecast updates, and multi-sheet annual budgets. I built a multi-sheet workbook which included a data base of all employees that was used to cost out labor contract negotiations. There were endless ad hoc studies done in Excel. At the end of my career, it seemed that the ability to find ways to refine the forecasting process just resulted in management’s wish for more frequent and granular updates. Without Excel, I would have needed an army of analysts. Excel was and remains a pre-eminent tool for doing ‘what-if’ analyses, a favorite among bosses who seem to lean toward ‘paralysis through analysis’.
Now in retired life, my use of Excel has become far more mundane. Being an ex-accountant, I can’t stop myself from wanting – no, needing – to quantify everything. I keep a spreadsheet to track utility bills from month to month and year to year. I use Excel to track household spending by category so I know where the money goes. Insurance policy info is kept in an Excel list. Spending on medications is tracked in its own Excel file. And with more time to travel, I keep a spreadsheet detailing how many of what items I need to remember to pack for a one-week trip to see family versus a two-week cruise trip. While my wife starts to pack two weeks before a trip, inevitably leading to unpacking and repacking, I just review and update my Excel packing list, and the day before we leave I print off the list and check each item as it goes in the bags.
While Excel’s power shines in its ability to create sums and perform complex mathematic calculations in an instant, it can also be helpful simply by employing its ability to sort cells and lines. As the administrator of Tabmail, I keep a data base of all 700 plus subscribers in Excel. I have columns for email address, last name, first name, address, phone, and ISP. Each subscriber is listed on their own line. With this info, I can do a quick search to find just about anything in the data base or re-sort by different columns as the need arises. I’ve seen other people keep golf or bowling league scores and averages in Excel.
Excel is so powerful you could spend years learning to use all its capabilities, but you can become reasonably proficient with some basic instruction. Our community college offers a number of adult education courses on Excel, many of them through their Ed2Go program offering online classes you attend from the privacy of your own home, at the time you wish, using your own computer. Once you identify a couple of areas in your life where Excel can benefit you, you will be more inclined to invest the time to use it fully.
It can be difficult for someone not familiar with a spreadsheet program to understand how it may look or be used. An example might prove helpful. Following is a snapshot of a worksheet I did for the Cleveland Foundation, which was intended to allow for doing "what-if" analyses on the impact of various funding and spending assumptions. By plugging different assumptions into the yellow-highlighted cells with red fonts, the year-end balance at the end of the 30th year, shown in cell I-34, will change. A summary of the various scenario results is shown in the green font cells in rows 36 through 42.
Now clearly not everyone needs this fancy sort of projection analysis. But spreadsheets can also be helpful for more home-based uses.
Take for instance an analysis I did a year ago when we were considering various holiday cruise options. There are many cruise lines, many lengths of cruises, ports of call, departure dates, return dates, and oh yeah, costs. To help put all this on one sheet of paper for further consideration, I filled out a cruise option spreadsheet. Here is a partial view:
As I said, the above is only a partial view, as the number of columns extended out to column AB (a total of 28 columns). For many, this may be all the reason you need to thank your lucky stars you're don't live with me. Alas, you'd need to see out to column 'S' to know which one we decided on.
Spreadsheets don't have to be large or complex to be helpful. Here in my final example is a partial listing of the steps I take when setting up a Windows 10 computer as part of the work I do servicing computers. Sure, I could do this sort of thing in a word-processor, but spreadsheets make it easy to insert, delete, move, or resize rows and columns in a jiffy.
So that's a look at spreadsheets. I hope it has made you think about how you might employ a spreadsheet to simplify your life. Remember, you don't have to spend big bucks on Microsoft Office. You can cruise on over to http://www.libreoffice.org and download a free copy of Libre Office and accomplish the same things.