To learn more about the exciting world of Excel, we reached out to an expert on the topic: Bill Jelen, better known as MrExcel online. Bill has over 29 years of spreadsheet experience, has been doing Excel consulting since 1998, has been speaking about Excel since 2002, and has written over 40 books about Excel. He was also kind enough to share his expertise with us, so first, we wanted to know how Bill became an Excel expert in the first place and why.
“I started using the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet at the University of Notre Dame in the 1980s,” MrExcel told Bored Panda. “I was a teaching assistant for a professor. He was doing a research study to see if MBA students would learn better by reading a book or watching an interactive Laserdisc. At the end of the training, the MBA students would take a comprehensive exam on spreadsheets. My lowly job was to grade the exams. Once I realized that no one was getting more than a 60% score, I decided to learn every question on the test.”
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“This gave me a good head start before I began working. Once I got a job in Accounting, then I was using first Lotus 1-2-3 and then Excel 40-60 hours every week,” Bill continued. “It is the daily use that really builds your skills. And now, today, as I teach Excel in seminars, I get questions not just from 1 company, but I get to see the data problems from hundreds of companies. Solving those problems forces me to investigate every corner of Excel looking for ways to solve each problem.”
We were also curious what Bill actually thinks of Excel. “I love using Excel,” he told Bored Panda. “I love data. I love how I can use Excel to summarize and visualize data. Many times, I create a fake data set to use while demonstrating a feature. I will see some unusual trend in the fake data and actually start to dive in to find the root cause. After 20 minutes of investigating, I have to remind myself that this data is fake. Any trends are purely random.”
We also asked Bill if Excel is useful for everyone to know. “Anyone working in an office environment should have some Excel skills,” he shared. “Excel is great at tracking rows and columns of data (such as the number of miles you run each day of the week for the month). Some basic skills will let you build that worksheet, add some conditional formatting and totals so you can understand your personal trends.”
“Once you start using Excel to transform data at work, then you need to take a course to learn faster ways of doing tasks in Excel. It is very easy to spend 6 hours working on a task in Excel and someone who knows more features can knock that task out in 2 or 3 minutes using a Pivot Table or Automatic Subtotals or Power Query,” he added.
Bill is also confident that Excel is here to stay, at least for a while. “It won't become obsolete in my lifetime,” he told Bored Panda. “But 50 years from now, there will be better ways to get answers from data. Already, Excel has the Analyze Data icon on the Home tab that uses a Machine Learning server to answer questions about your data posed in English. Let that technology improve for 20 or 30 years and you will be able to ask the 2050 version of Siri to analyze the data for you.”
If you’d like to learn more about Excel and gain some insight from MrExcel himself, be sure to check out his website right here, which features learning articles, videos, and a database of over 1 million Excel questions and answers.
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We also reached out to Alexander Frolov at AbleBits.com to hear the perspective of another Excel expert. First, we wanted to hear how Alexander became a pro at using Excel as well. "I started with Lotus 1-2-3 in 1995 - a friend asked for my help with calculating and maintaining a register of land plots," he told Bored Panda. "In 1998, I started to work for a small IT company that developed software for organizations; they used Excel as a report generator. A few years later, I was invited to another IT company that developed extensions for Office applications with the primary focus on Excel and Outlook. There it is." That IT company became AbleBits.com, which today offers Ultimate Suite for Microsoft Excel - a superstar of Excel add-ins, which includes 70+ time-saving tools to handle almost every task in Excel.
We were also curious what Alexander's thoughts are on the famous spreadsheet application. "I really enjoy using Excel, it's like a Lego constructor that lets you do almost anything you want," he told Bored Panda. "But because of Microsoft's approach to writing help, I'd say it's is an excellent constructor with missing/lost instructions," he added with a smile.
Alexander also believes that we should all have some basic Excel skills, because the program can be beneficial to everyone. "Excel, like the entire Microsoft Office suite, is designed to help people (teachers, doctors, managers, etc.) with their daily tasks without them having to memorize formulas or learn the VBA language for weeks," he told Bored Panda. "For more complex things, there are experts who have to earn their living somehow."
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Alexander also doesn't expect Excel to become obsolete anytime soon. "Millions of templates (reports, presentations, dashboards, etc.) and hundreds of thousands of programs, small and large, have already been created for Excel, so it'll definitely stay here for the next 10 years," he shared. "The emergence of yet another trendy AI might be a challenge, but I believe Excel will survive."
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"Excel is a lot more than an out of the box program," Alexander added. "In addition to documented features and functions, it offers many undocumented 'magical' opportunities for power users. With just a little creativity, you can always find new ways to accomplish things that Excel's developers may have never thought possible."
"For more than 10 years, we have been running our blog that teaches Excel in simple and easy-to-understand language (well, we hope so) and shows how to unleash Excel's potential to work out custom non-trivial solutions for specific tasks," he told Bored Panda. "For people who have more money than free time, we have a set of goodies - Ultimate Suite for Excel - that automates many routine daily tasks."
If you'd like to learn more about Excel yourself or reach out to the experts at AbleBits.com, be sure to visit their website right here.
Okay, back to the Excel origin story. The real one, I promise. Excel was launched in 1985 by Microsoft to compete with the then-popular Lotus 1-2-3. Excel had one big advantage though, as it was created to be compatible with PCs and the Apple Macintosh computer, while Lotus 1-2-3 could only be used on PCs. Since its release, Excel has absolutely dominated the field and become a staple in many industries.
According to ExcelHelp, some of the most important and popular features of Microsoft Excel are its abilities to: “efficiently model and analyze almost any data; zero in on the right data points quickly; create data charts in a single cell; access spreadsheets from virtually anywhere; connect, share, and accomplish more when working together; take advantage of more interactive and dynamic PivotCharts; add more sophistication to your data presentations; accomplish tasks easier and faster; harness more power for building bigger, more complex spreadsheets; and publish and share through Excel Services.”
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Thanks to all of its enticing features, there are now over 1.1 billion Excel users around the world. In fact, one study from Acuity Training found that many office workers spend about 38% of their time using Excel. The application is clearly used in a wide variety of industries and roles, but, according to TechTarget, some of the most common uses for Excel are collection and verification of business data; business analysis; data entry and storage; data analysis; performance reporting; strategic analysis; accounting and budgeting; administrative and managerial management; account management; project management; and office administration.
And when it comes to the professions that rely the most heavily on Excel, Invest in Tech notes that financial analysts, administrative assistants, retail store managers, project managers, business analysts, data journalists and accountants are all avid Excel users. But having skills when it comes to Microsoft Excel can help you in almost any job, as a quick search on any online job board site will yield plenty of results for jobs requiring Excel proficiency.
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But despite how common it is to utilize Excel during the workday, as 66% of office workers use the application at least once per hour, it’s not so easy to actually become an expert on the program. According to Acuity Training, people need help from colleagues about twice a week with Excel issues, and 12% of office workers have seen an Excel mistake cost over $12,000. This might be because less than half of us have ever received formal training when it comes to Excel, so it can take a while to get a really good grasp on the program.
If you want to become an Excel expert (or perhaps an Excelpert?), you’re going to want to take a course or receive the proper training to understand the application. In fact, expert Excel users are 400% more likely to have received formal training, which is definitely worth the time and effort to avoid making costly mistakes and spending unnecessary time completing simple tasks. “Given that [workers] spend around 20 hours per week using Excel, if a one-day course sped up their work by just 5%, it would save them over a week of work each year,” Acuity Training explains.
