A few years ago I could do some really cool things, now I have forgotten everything. I was actually trying to write a formula yesterday and just could not do it.
@conandlibrarian create a new worksheet, and press F5. Type “X97:L97” and press Enter. Press the Tab key, hold down Ctrl and Shift, and left-click the Chart Wizard toolbar icon.
I’ve honestly never had a reason to use it for anything beyond the most basic table, and what people do with it is a mystery to me. I’m pretty sure I’m grateful for that.
I said Excel-lent, but I’ve never actually learned the dark arts of pivot tables or scripting. I can make some pretty complicated formulas and conditional formatting, though.
@jqubed I picked “not embarrassing” but I love putting together sheets with conditional formatting and restricted entries, because I can and it makes people go “how did you do that?” But there are still many great mysteries.
@heartny I’m in a pretty similar boat, but there’s so much you can do without macros, anyway, and there’s a point after which I just say “look, Access is the better tool for this”.
I learned VisiCalc, and got a certain level of competence with Lotus 123 and 2020 spreadsheets. Generally don’t do microsoft. Excel is on the machine at work (no choice) but is rarely used.
I took an Microsoft Office class in college (got me a decent grant) that was 90% Excel. Learned just enough to pass. Then I had a bio lab that made us graph and chart, and all of us in the class traded tips and tricks, and now my coworkers treat me like a wizard. Sadly, it is rare that I really get to pull out all the stops, so I am getting rusty.
Index-match (better than vlookup!), conditional formatting, actually nice graphs, pivot tables, SparkLines. But don’t ask me about macros. Been working on Access too, which has much crummier resources for more than basic things.
Relative to my office I’m a goddamn wizard, and I’d venture to say that’s probably true for like…90%+ of the hospital.
@Kawa Here’s one trivial case: say you’re businessly forecasting future labor costs.
You have a column of employee hours for a week (where rows are employees) and a set of employee wage rates. You could multiply the two columns and then sum those up into a single value, without adding any intermediate formulas.
Has anyone played around with the Fuzzy Lookup addin? You can match on several criteria and it will return whatever percentage of certainty you specify. It’s fun!
I think I’m really good, and people tend to ask me Excel questions, so they view me as the knowledgeable one. Then I see some formula I’ve never seen before and feel like a beginner. So I’m somewhere between acceptable and very good. But I love excel.
So freakish weird coincidence - someone just came and asked me to help them program some conditional statements for their Excel spreadsheet… from the floor above me… who I rarely hear from and had no idea they knew I was an Excel expert… it’s like Meh is predicting the future! (Or maybe they’re stalking me…)
Excellent
I’ve been known to spread a few sheets in my day.
A few years ago I could do some really cool things, now I have forgotten everything. I was actually trying to write a formula yesterday and just could not do it.
@conandlibrarian start with “=”
@conandlibrarian create a new worksheet, and press F5. Type “X97:L97” and press Enter. Press the Tab key, hold down Ctrl and Shift, and left-click the Chart Wizard toolbar icon.
(requires Excel 97)
vlookup and pivot tables.
@atannir vlookup is great for that time you want to do more work calculating what score you need to pass than you spend studying.
@atannir index-match is so much more flexible than vlookup; I’ve never looked back once I got to know it.
@Kawa I totally agree. I use much prefer index/match to vlookup. I tend to think of vlookup users as novices.
@Kawa check out arrays
@Yoda_Daenerys I love arrays, but it really bogs down the system when there is a lot of data.
Some of the classes I took for my MBA required a greater knowledge of Excel than I have/had. YouTube is a wonderful thing
In a prior (corporate, soul-sucking) life I spoke better Excel than English.
Folks from all over the company came with their “Excel can’t do this, can it?” challenges.
This guy is good at excel
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2013/05/28/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-spreadsheet-artist/
@thismyusername Here is another one only an animation with music (there is a video of this embedded in the article).
http://mashable.com/2012/08/10/music-video-microsoft-excel/#h2feIrmzBSqb
Gotta be easier ways to do this though… (although perhaps not cheaper).
I’ve honestly never had a reason to use it for anything beyond the most basic table, and what people do with it is a mystery to me. I’m pretty sure I’m grateful for that.
I said Excel-lent, but I’ve never actually learned the dark arts of pivot tables or scripting. I can make some pretty complicated formulas and conditional formatting, though.
@jqubed I picked “not embarrassing” but I love putting together sheets with conditional formatting and restricted entries, because I can and it makes people go “how did you do that?” But there are still many great mysteries.
I can do a lot of cool stuff in Excel, including pivot tables (assuming those are cool), but I must admit I’m macro-challenged.
@heartny I’m in a pretty similar boat, but there’s so much you can do without macros, anyway, and there’s a point after which I just say “look, Access is the better tool for this”.
Self proclaimed Master of the Universe in Excel. www.wallst.training
I learned VisiCalc, and got a certain level of competence with Lotus 123 and 2020 spreadsheets. Generally don’t do microsoft. Excel is on the machine at work (no choice) but is rarely used.
@duodec
Remember the VisiClones?
@f00l what about the visigoths?
I took an Microsoft Office class in college (got me a decent grant) that was 90% Excel. Learned just enough to pass. Then I had a bio lab that made us graph and chart, and all of us in the class traded tips and tricks, and now my coworkers treat me like a wizard. Sadly, it is rare that I really get to pull out all the stops, so I am getting rusty.
Better than average.
Pulled off some magic with conditional formatting just yesterday.
I’m pretty good, but owe all my knowledge to Chandoo.org. the guy is awesome
When I worked, I was MS Office certified. (Among other MS products) Taught all our admins. One of the reasons for my handle.
Index-match (better than vlookup!), conditional formatting, actually nice graphs, pivot tables, SparkLines. But don’t ask me about macros. Been working on Access too, which has much crummier resources for more than basic things.
Relative to my office I’m a goddamn wizard, and I’d venture to say that’s probably true for like…90%+ of the hospital.
@Kawa Array formulas! Arraaaayyy formulas!
@InnocuousFarmer So when exactly are array formulas the solution? I’ve seen some sumproduct madness in the past but never quite grokked it.
@Kawa Here’s one trivial case: say you’re businessly forecasting future labor costs.
You have a column of employee hours for a week (where rows are employees) and a set of employee wage rates. You could multiply the two columns and then sum those up into a single value, without adding any intermediate formulas.
I learned enough Excel to be really annoyed when I can’t figure out how to do something in Google Sheets.
@dave Gosh - look! They’ve finally added rotated text to Google sheets!
Has anyone played around with the Fuzzy Lookup addin? You can match on several criteria and it will return whatever percentage of certainty you specify. It’s fun!
enough to know what I don’t know, but how to find out how to.
I think I’m really good, and people tend to ask me Excel questions, so they view me as the knowledgeable one. Then I see some formula I’ve never seen before and feel like a beginner. So I’m somewhere between acceptable and very good. But I love excel.
Now Word, I suck. Strike that, Word sucks.
I have no Excel skills whatsoever, I don’t work for that Energy company.
I have to google how to sort data by column. I suck. I’d rather be writing SQL queries.
VBA is easier in Excel than Word IMHO.
@gallogj I was just getting familiar with Word’s object model – gave me that familiar “murder Microsoft” feeling…
Prefer sc/scim.
VBA all the way!
/giphy vba
@Mehrocco_Mole …this is actually a really neat function, but I usually make printed analytics, not interactive stuff. Huh.
So freakish weird coincidence - someone just came and asked me to help them program some conditional statements for their Excel spreadsheet… from the floor above me… who I rarely hear from and had no idea they knew I was an Excel expert… it’s like Meh is predicting the future! (Or maybe they’re stalking me…)
@IWUJackson wait… is that a Foscam in the corner of the room pointed in your direction…
I am only good at Excel when I can Access it.