The Powers Of Excel

[ssc456]

Hey Guys and Dolls,

I return once again after a period of absence to grace you with my presence, share my knowledge and just have a good old chit chat.

My first subject being Microsoft Excel. . . . . . . WOW what a program.

First off i start by asking a question, in your opinion what d you think Excel can do as a program. If your answer is something along the lines of takes various tables of data, add them, average them report on them then your in for an eye opener.

My answer would be "just about anything".

alot of you may know this but i'm betting many don't Excel has a built in VB editor which in a sense means you can write your own programs within excel to do just about anything. I won't go into too much detail but i now have Excel interacting with the software i user at work, pulling data live from the database reporting on it and accepting user responses and in turn writing to the database.

What a tool!! I reccomend anybody that works with spreadsheets regulary to google around and research what you can do with excel VBA as you can probably make your working life ALOT simpler.

 

[foothead]

From the sounds of it, my dad has something pretty much identical to you. It pulls all the emission tables from the chemical plant he works at and checks for discrepancies, then alerts the user if there's anything that needs to be checked on further. It also allows the user to input specific equipment problems, and it will recalculate based on that. The whole thing is written in excel, and it manages to load up an i5 computer for about a minute when doing more intensive things. Excel isn't exactly efficient...

 

[ssc456]

ha-ha now that your right about efficiency is a huge downfall with Excel.
i mean i was using 2003 and it can only use a single core to process everything.

I've upgraded to 2007 now, trying to convince the boss to make another step to 2010.

 

[Legodude522]

ha-ha now that your right about efficiency is a huge downfall with Excel.
i mean i was using 2003 and it can only use a single core to process everything.

I've upgraded to 2007 now, trying to convince the boss to make another step to 2010.

For a long time I used Office 94 with Word for Windows 6.0. It did everything I needed to do and efficiently.

 

[berry120]

alot of you may know this but i'm betting many don't Excel has a built in VB editor which in a sense means you can write your own programs within excel to do just about anything.

I'd say this is pretty common knowledge actually It's also VBA, not quite VB - which does have a lot of limitations, and is an awful language to work with.

Back in the day (15+ years ago) it was pretty revolutionary, and it's still useful today though not so much of an eye opener. As pointed out efficiency can be, well, questionable and if I was doing any serious number crunching on a regular basis I'd probably look at other options. It is a useful skill to have however.

 

[Dngrsone]

As the most user-friendly program in Office (as in, the only user-friendly program in Office), I've seen Excel used in many ways that would probably be better done in Access.

Personally, I used Excel for cataloging various inventories, tracking capabilities lists, arranging schedules and duty-rosters, etc. Basically everything except actual spreadshett duty (or creating text documents).

I still use it occasinally at my current job, but I hate the current Office product.

At home, I use Open Office and its Calc program, which is pretty much the same as Excel, but a lot less expensive.