Question

Week 1: Getting Familiar With Excel

15 15 unread replies. 18 18 replies.

Excel was introduced in 1985. Since then, it has become a standard business tool.

Discuss and explain at least six different (unique) features of Excel that make it a valuable business tool.

Discuss what type of Excel skills would be important in today’s job market and why. Be specific.

Note: In addition to the Microsoft Excel 2016 overview in the Course Home section, there are many Excel resources in addition to your text on the Web. For example, try an Internet search on "top ten Excel 2016 features" and sift through some of the resources. Be sure to read your classmates' posts, and see how many features you can find that haven't been listed yet.

Answer 1

Unique features of Excel that make it a valuable tool:

1. Pivot Table: It can summarise lot of data in form of unique table form that be sorted and read as per convinience. This helps in analysing large volumes of unsorted data.

2. Power View: Helps in making reports quickly.

3. Data can be analysed using charts and tables.

4. Chart tools: Excel is very helpful in making charts. There are lots of chart templates and also suggestions for appropriate charts based on the data set to be analysed.

5. Sorting and filtering data. Excel has "sort" feature, which can be used in sorting and arranging large amount of data in a structred manner.

6. Excel has a vast range of functions for performing simple tasks to complex formulas for addition, multiplication, mean, average, subtraction, division and many numerous statistical and scientific formulae.

7. Look-up formulas (VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH etc.): Lookup formulas help you locate any information in your workbooks based on input criteria. By knowing how to write lookup formulas, one can build dashboards, make interactive charts and create effective models.

Excel skills important in today's job market.

1. VBA, Macros and Automation: VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications, is a special language that Excel speaks. By learning this language, one can generate and email reports automatically.

Macros are little VBA programs written to achieve this. Once you learn VBA, suddenly your company will find you invaluable, thanks to all the time & effort you will be saving due to automation.

2. Pivot Tables: They save you lots of time, let you create complex reports, charts & calculations all with few clicks.

Pivot tables are ideal tools for managers & analysts who always have to answer questions like,

• What is the trend of sales in last 6 months?
• Who are our top 10 customers?
• Which button do I press for strong latte?

Pivot tables can answer almost any business question if you throw right data at them. When presenting data in form of charts and graphs, users are able to notice the key emerging trend from the information at hand.

3.  Lookup formulas (VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH etc.): Lookup formulas help you locate any information in your workbooks based on input criteria. By knowing how to write lookup formulas, you can build dashboards, make interactive charts, create effective models. Excel helps to bring similar data of related entities together.

4. Excel charts help you communicate insights & information with ease. By choosing your charts wisely and formatting them cleanly, you can convey a lot.

5. Conditional formatting is a hidden feature in Excel that can make your workbooks informative. By adding some conditional formatting to highlight your data, you can turn boring into interesting. With new features like data bars, color scales & icon sets, conditional formatting is even more powerful. Excel is used for conditional formatting which predicts changes likely to take place in future.

6. PowerPivot, Data Explorer & Data Analysis features: Excel add-ins like PowerPivot, Data Explorer and Analysis tool packs let Excel do more like

• Combining multiple tables and creating reports from them
• Processing data from difference sources and getting output to Excel
• What if analysis, scenarios & optimization.

These are very sought after skills in business.