Microsoft Excel, a program both feared and revered at the same time.

For those that appreciate an efficient way to manipulate data, then there are scarcely better applications than this one.

The average PC user will most likely be familiar with its existence, but digging deeper can be a challenge, but one that has great rewards. Beginning with a simple lifestyle budget, or perhaps a tax return, all the way up to managing the finances of a big business.

Curating a plan is the first step to setting up any spreadsheet. Outline your needs, inputs, and desired outcomes. Almost anything can be achieved with the tools that are on offer; and all for free!

If the spreadsheet is to be used by multiple people, it pays to spend time ensuring that the environment looks appealing, is easy to navigate and understand. Adding bold or coloured headers, notes, and data filters will take the work out of doing things manually.

The “Autosave” feature is a handy tool to have enabled, to ensure that no information is lost. If your spreadsheet is quite large, then keeping a back-up of the file is a very good idea too.

Once you have mastered the built in features and are still finding functions that are lacking, then learning Visual Basic is the next step. Programming tasks, events and calculations can be done on the fly and in the background. A good way to learn this skill, is to play with the macro recording function and learn from there.

It will soon become apparent that collating data and presenting it in a useful manner, will save you a lot of time. The more features you incorporate, the easier your life will be.

At Quantech Design, we use Excel to manage our client’s information, which is shared back and forth. Everything from part numbers, drawing specifications, bill of materials, work instructions, production build sheets etc. All these jobs are made more efficient, freeing up time for other tasks.

We will often integrate other third-party software, such as CAD programs and cloud storage. Giving our customers remote and complete access to all their information, which is updated instantly.

So, in short, give it a go. You might be surprised at how much time it will save you, and if you get stuck, remember, the internet is full of people that are willing to help.

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