If you asked me what single tool I could not live without at work, my answer would be Excel spreadsheets. I am one of those people who constantly have ten (or more) spreadsheets open at the same time. Laying out information and data in a meaningful way and being able to analyze and scrutinize over numbers and graphs excites me. Yes, I’m a self-described nerd.
But if analysis and numbers are not your vibe, don’t write Excel off just yet! Whether you are a numbers geek or a spontaneous creative (or both like me), I can guarantee that using spreadsheets can take your performance and results to the next level. I have personally used Excel for both analytical projects as well as creative projects in my job. I’ve used it to do everything from creating calendars to conducting compensation analyses. But in fact, there is such a wide variety of things you can do in Excel that don’t involve numbers, which is one of the reasons I truly believe that everyone should learn how to use it.
Here are just a few fun and helpful ideas of how you can use Excel in practical ways that will help you stay organized and make your work look more professional!
Interactive Calendars
You can use Excel to create a calendar layout. There are actually many calendar templates that come free from Microsoft. To access those free templates:
- File > New
- Search for “Calendars”
- Browse the dozens of calendar templates and select the one that appeals to you and best fits your purpose.
But did you know that you can also make your calendar interactive by linking calendar invites to the spreadsheet? This makes it simple for your team members to register for the events they want to attend and it helps you keep track of the registered participants. I use interactive calendars to allow my team to sign up for training sessions that I hold on a recurring basis. This way I can hold several of the same training throughout the month and team members can have the flexibility of choosing the times that work best for them.
If your organization holds recurring events or webinars that require attendees to register, you might not need to invest in a software that does what an Excel spreadsheet can just as easily do.
Project Plan/ Task List
You can think of a project plan as a glorified to-do list for when you have a large project or several projects related to the same topic. Large projects can have several moving parts and multiple team members involved. Creating a project plan is a good way to help you assign tasks to different people and keep track of the progress.
There are many tools available that will generate project plans and Gantt charts for you including Microsoft Project and countless other project management softwares available in the market. However, you can also make a simple and effective project plan in Excel as well.
For example, you can create a plan structure by making a table with the following headers:
- Task Name
- Status
- Notes
- SME/Owner
- Priority
- Start Date
- Estimated Delivery Date
You can also use conditional formatting on your project plan to help you stay more organized and identify which tasks should take precedence over others. For example, if your priority levels are 1, 2 and 3 with 1 being the highest priority and 3 being the lowest, you can apply conditional formatting to automatically highlight your 1’s in red, 2’s in yellow and 3’s in green. I know, I know 1, 2 and 3 are numbers and I promised no numbers. You can also use High, Medium and Low as your priority levels to achieve the same result!
Create Professional Forms in Excel:
Does your organization use internal forms and documents to collect information and signatures? Most likely, these are created and saved as Word documents or PDF. While Word can certainly get the job done in creating forms, there are additional tools in Excel that will help you keep the document looking professional and error proof for end users.
Using the Developer add-in, you can add items to your form such as command buttons, check boxes, radial buttons, comment boxes and more to make your form interactive. If you do not have the Developer tab in your menu. You can add it by right-clicking on any of the tabs in the top menu and selecting ‘Customize Ribbon’. In the ‘Main Tabs’ listed on the right hand side of the screen, check the box for Developer to enable it and click ‘OK’.
In addition, you can use the Data Validation feature found under the Data tab to help error-proof your form. For example, if one of the fields in your form asks for today’s date and you want to prevent users from entering any other date you can use Data Validation to do so. The Data Validation rule for this example would look something like this:
Bonus: Excel Art
For all you hardcore creatives out there who still think that Excel is for nerds, I bet you never thought that masterpiece “paintings” could be created using Excel. Well, Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi is here to prove you wrong. Check out his insanely impressive talent here.
