zandax online course logo
zandax website search
zandax phone callback
Info, Blogs, Contact & Login
Courses
Tests

Seven Reasons Why You Should Learn How to Use Excel

From the ZandaX Microsoft Software Blog

Articles to help you improve your Microsoft software skills

Home  >  ZandaX Blogs  >  Business Blog  >  Microsoft Software Articles  > 
Seven Reasons Why You Should Learn How to Use Excel

Seven Reasons Why You Should Learn How to Use Excel

A post from our Microsoft Software blog

Article author: Jordan James
      Written by Jordan James
There are many different job roles out there, and many types of companies, but one common thread is their use of Excel across all industries and walks of life.

It's a key business tool that's developed over the years and has many incredible capabilities, far too many to discuss them all in this article.

1.    Industry Standard Software

So how is Excel useful? Well, let's say you work in Finance, so how many hours do you imagine they spend on Excel? A lot usually.  If the number crunching needs to be done, they may use other systems, but they always get data out of that system into a more user-friendly standard system and go for it in Excel. Finance people need Excel to formulate reports, charts, simulations, and do "what if" analysis on data, so it's the ideal tool to do the job. Plus, it has a lot of finance specific Functions built in, try looking at PMT, IPMT, PPMT, SLN and so on.

Want Better Excel Skills?


If you'd like to learn more about Microsoft Excel, why not take a look at how we can help?

We have a whole range of online courses for all skill levels.
RRP from $59 – limited time offer just $14.00



If you work in Sales, you will need to report totals, averages, margins, basic calculations, charts, maybe you will need to create wonderful Dashboards. This is a buzzword of the moment with many companies looking to create superb user-friendly, exciting dashboard-style interfaces to their back-end data sheets containing charts, interactive menus, dropdown options, button controlled reports and charts. Slicers and Timelines can also be incorporated into the dashboards.

Engineers will need to use calculations, projected figures, quantities, VLOOKUP functions and charts of various types, they also have a range of built-in functions specific to that area such as CONVERT, SIN COS and TAN functions.



2.    Boost Productivity

Excel can boost productivity tenfold in a business if you know how to quickly create a decent spreadsheet. Then, you are a key asset to that business as you have very useful skills. Excel is a logical application and is fairly user-friendly to learn. Yes, some of the formulae are as complex as you can imagine, but the logic is often straightforward. Productivity is boosted by knowing and using things like keyboard shortcuts to speed up your use of Excel, and then using features such as copy/paste, dragging formulas across columns and rows they will re-adjust themselves to their new cell references. Large amounts of data can be quickly manipulated in Excel by filtering, sorting, doing calculations, what if analysis, charting data as a pie chart or line charts with trendlines. Conditional formatting can add a splash of colour such as red, amber and green traffic light controls. You can add ticks, crosses, data bars, thermal scales, smiley faces. Being compatible with other office applications also means you can quickly share data via Excel or copy it over to Word or PowerPoint for reports and presentations.

3.    Improve Quality of Work

Excel can improve the quality of work you produce by letting you easily create beautiful dashboards, reports, interfaces, charts and nicely formatted data. This can easily be pasted across to a PowerPoint presentation or a Word document for management to follow. Working to a standard template means also a better quality of data and formulas as someone else has created and checked the template for formula accuracy and standard formatting layout and positioning.


4.    Many ways to learn

We recommend using instructor-led training, as this is still the best method of learning Excel, but there are plenty more resources out there, including eLearning packages!

In a classroom, you can talk through your problems and issues with spreadsheets to an expert who has many years of experience in those systems and they can give you direct advice. You can't really do this with online videos and recorded non-live content. With classroom training, it's nice to get some downloadable content as well, to play and experiment with.

However, not everyone has time to take a day out for training and would prefer to learn in bite-sized chunks. In this regard, there are eLearning packages, videos and online tutorials available from all over the web.



5.    Versatility

Businesses without spreadsheets would be a sad place indeed. How could Pete number crunch that big data from the online sales or how can Acme Ltd predict the next quarter profits, without your finance simulator spreadsheet? How can Dave see orders over the next twelve months via his dashboard without Excel? Will Anna be able to choose her new product range without the pie charts, or will Ben be able to see who he needs to call this week without Marks' Excel based sales contact data sheets? How will you calculate the end of term stationary requirements, or calculate what we should charge our clients for the next year rentals based on last year plus 4%?

Without our beloved spreadsheets, so many processes would require specific and potentially expensive software. Why bother when Excel can do the lot?




6.    Collaboration

Excel has many collaborative capabilities nowadays, and these can really help you get on with your business no matter where your staff are based. MS Office is truly a global set of tools and with Excel, we can share spreadsheets and get managers or team members to add data, make changes to existing cells, modify formulas, alter or add formatting and charts. You can then control the changes and track them, approve or reject changes to cells and add comments to the data cells as needed.

Office 365 is now being rolled out to numerous companies, and the possibilities of working on a sheet at the same time as other colleagues, are endless. Online collaboration is the way forward!



7.    You will become a God in the Office!

We know that learning to use Excel properly will enhance your experience with spreadsheets and allow you to create wonderful, colourful, interactive sheets that easily display your data and calculations neatly and cleanly.


And once people realise how amazing you are, they will be coming to you to help them with their own work….

… on second thoughts, this may not always be one of the best reasons to learn Excel.




Want Better Excel Skills?


If you'd like to learn more about Microsoft Excel, why not take a look at how we can help?

We have a whole range of online courses for all skill levels.
RRP from $59 – limited time offer just $14.00

Back to the Microsoft Software blog

Click the button for more Microsoft Software articles.

The ZandaX Business Skills blog

Click a panel for great articles on business skills

Write For Us

We pride ourselves on our busy, high-quality and helpful blog, and we're always looking for guest contributors to increase the variety and diversity of what we present.

Click to see how you can write for us with an original and well-written guest post.

ZandaX Blog Contents

Want to see them all? Click to view a full list of articles in our blogs.

Online courses to boost your skills
Click a button to see more about each course
Personal Development
Microsoft Software
 
 
Leadership & Management
Sales & Presentations
Service & Support
 
 
ZandaX online training course logo
ZandaX – Change Your Life ... Today
All content © ZandaX 2023
ZandaX LinkedIn logo
ZandaX LinkedIn logo
ZandaX LinkedIn logo
Close menu element
See how you score on a range of skills that are critical to your well-being and performance
Communication Skill test
Communication Skills
How Can You Communicate Better?
Would you like to see what kind of communicator you are? And how you can improve the effectiveness of your communications?
Likeability test
Likeability
How Much Do People Like You?
Do you sometimes wonder just how likeable you are? And wouldn't you like to see how you can (genuinely) become more likeable?


Time Management test
Time Management
How Can You Make More Use Of Your Time?
Are you frustrated by how easily time slips away? Do you get frustrated when things don't get done just because you run out of time?
Assertiveness test
Assertiveness
Are you Passive, Aggressive or Assertive?
Would you like to know where you fall on the behavior spectrum? Does your response to events sometimes surprise you?


Close menu element
Information & Resources
ZandaX information
Information
Read more about us, our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service
See how we want to help you, and how we make everything easy for everyone
Callback request
ZandaX Blogs
Articles to increase your knowledge and understanding in key areas of your life and career.
Read our blogs on Personal Development, Business Skills and Leadership & Management


Time Management test
Log In
Log in to your online dashboard
View your courses, review what you want and download your workbooks and certificates
Assertiveness test
Contact Us
An easy online form to get in touch
With options for More Information, Customer Service and Feedback


Close menu element
Develop Your Skills, Knowledge and Understanding with ZandaX
Click any subject in the listings for more information and a full list of courses

Personal Development
Personal Development training
Your soft skills affect everything you do, at work, at home and with friends ... they are truly life changing!
NEW COURSES
Online training courses
Hot Off the Press...
We're always adding to and upgrading our courses, so here are a few of our latest releases:
For a full listing of courses, please visit our Quick Course Finder to find exactly what you want.
Site Cookies
We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better.

You can change your cookie settings in your browser. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue.

I'm fine with this