What Is Excel Good For?
Excel, as you probably know, is the world’s most widely used spreadsheet program and is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Other spreadsheet programs are available, but Excel is by far the most popular and has become the world standard.
Much of the appeal of Excel is due to the fact that it’s so versatile. Excel’s forte, of course, is performing numerical calculations, but Excel is also very useful for non-numerical applications. Here are just a few of the uses for Excel:
Number crunching: Create budgets, analyze survey results, and perform just about any type of financial analysis you can think of
Creating charts: Create a wide variety of highly customizable charts
Organizing lists: Use the row-and-column layout to store lists efficiently
Accessing other data: Import data from a wide variety of sources
Creating graphics and diagrams: Use Shapes and the new SmartArt to create professional-looking diagrams
Automating complex tasks: Perform a tedious task with a single mouse click with Excel’s macro capabilities
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