What do you guys use Excel for?

[Sgt_Strider]

I've been an office user for a while now, but I only use Outlook and Word. I've never had the need to use Excel and now I'm thinking of installing it and play around with it. The problem is though I'm not sure what to use it for. What are you guys using it for besides payroll? Thanks

[EchoNoise]

Spread sheeting... you know... speading the sheets around... lol

Nah, I use it for price lists for my business and also for Time Sheets

[markajm]

Excel is great for manipulating data/numbers/graphs/etc. Once you start looking at what it can do you realise it is very powerful. and if there is something it can't do, you can write your own code/macros to make it do it.

[JRosenfeld]

I use it for

Analysing experimental data and making graphs

General maths (in combination with Mathcad)

Budgets and financial control for meetings

Membership/attendance lists

CD catalogue

Household inventories and purchases (e.g. wine cellar)

I dare say much of the non maths uses could be done better in Access, but for my needs Excel is easier.

ASAP utilities is a very useful free addin to extend Excel functionality

http://www.asap-utilities.com/

[spacesurfer]

I use it at work for drug-drug compatibility in same IV bag.

At home, I use it for analyzing my income, taxes, etc. and bills. I export data from MS Money.

At my temple, I use it for managing the thousands of stones that are being used in the construction of our new temple - it's made of marble and sandstone and each stone is numbers, from smallest to biggest. I learned a whole lot of Excel from doing this than I have ever since I started using Excel.

[zakum]

I've been an office user for a while now, but I only use Outlook and Word. I've never had the need to use Excel and now I'm thinking of installing it and play around with it. The problem is though I'm not sure what to use it for.

I`m like you, never used it. Would not not know where to start, it looks to daunting to me

[spacesurfer]

Daunting?

Well at first it might be but it's a great program with many possibilities. Some that you'd think you had never seen before.

I even made my amortization schedule on my house loan with it with it's functions.

You can't let Excel daunt you. It takes little steps to learn it.

[ringfinger]

Excel is the best app in the office package IMO. I've delved deep into the functionality of it and it's quite powerful if you know what you're doing. In my last job I was in cost control, managing over 500k in retail inventory at a resort.... If it were not for the VLOOKUP command I would have been completly hosed. Pulling data from 4 systems to get an end result of 2 columns, item # and count #. But, if you really have no use for it, and just want to play around with it... I don't really think you'll like it that much! Getting paid to use excel is worlds better P.S. If you're a neat freak on your ocmputer with nameing conventions and such, you can loose days in excel.

[ricktendo]

My mom averages here students grades.

I have it set up so she just fills in the blanks and the averages show up and change automatically depending on wich grade she puts in.

BTW I dont use EXEL, I use Open Office Calc

[EchoNoise]

Well I now currently use it for soduku calculations

[spacesurfer]

how exactly do you use it for sudoku?

[IcemanND]

sending survey question to customers, after extracting data afrom various databases

[prx984]

i dont use it. i know how to, but i dont need it therefore i dont use it. its a pretty decent peice of software, don't get me wrong, i just havent needed to use it since grade 8 computer class. we did small mathematical equations and stuff with it.

[gamehead200]

Price lists, invoices, graphs, organization, inventory, etc. Currently using it to mark down an inventory of laptops using a barcode reader and the service tags on the bottom of the laptops. (Barcode readers are REALLY handy! )