Do most office workers and managers usually only know the bare minimum in Excel?
I love working with Excel simply because it has so much potential to optimize workflows, save time and minimize errors.
However, I am always surprised by how many superiors are surprised by what I can do with Excel.
Not highly complex. (No programming)
Managers with almost 25/30 years of professional experience and countless interns and employees in their careers.
Do most people simply not know what is possible with Excel?
(3 votes)
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Clear yes!
Because it is simply not the task of a manager, he delegated the work, whether you are doing this with Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Notepad or CAD, ultimately it doesn’t matter.
I absolutely agree and it goes within a few minutes, meanwhile I give training in Excel and therefore know quite exactly what is known and what is rather unknown. The mass of users dominates the basics, but you ask the same who thinks good in Excel, will report 50-70%, daily use is not good if you scratch only on the surface.
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As many users have already written here, this is a specific ability, my own general view is more likely that many consider themselves to be good in Excel, but usually not much. Mostly it is a bit WENN if one is good, he dominates something like SVERWEIS and then it becomes very thin very quickly. There are hundreds of functions, especially the text functions can be very powerful when they know to use. Aggregate and partial result to name two absolute basics actually do not know many to use, in which case the can be very important, especially when working with tables that are filtered with the autofilter, because in this way you can remove hidden cells from the evaluation, SUMME e.g. does not do this.
The least really know how the formulas can interlock and what is possible in this way.
Nevertheless, I also have to give a user right down below, which will soon become more and more meaningless, as ChatGPT often finds good solutions for complex things. However, even if you are able to evaluate yourself most of the first attempts, which are often mistaken, and to report back ChatGPT, which is the problem, you have no idea that this will become much more difficult.
It also means that many of the Excel corpses come from old days that have experienced Excel growing up, but they are often no longer engaged in the innovations and resort to the old-known functions. With 2021 Excel, this has changed insanely. Consciously, this is the least known not bosses.
For example, our boss wants to hang up a project calendar with the dates that should have a special layout, so our “ass criminal” has reported himself and wanted to do him the favor, after half an hour I look how far he is, he seeks out the holidays individually writes the manually pure etc.
If I then sat down and let me lie 5min, then it was completely dynamic and finished and at the turn of the year just replace 2023 against 2024 and already the new calendar is finished, that he would have to walk hand by hand every time, that is in my eyes not Excel but paint and write.
The approach of many is indeed Excel is exaggeratedly said a slider. Basically, this is not quite wrong, but who abuses Excel only for computing has not fully understood Excel, because it can also be very good text processing.
A popular application area with me, for example, is some program spitting out an export as a CSV file, but once again it’s so cruel that you can’t feed a database. So Excel must produce and process the data, divide texts into several columns by means of certain logics, non-converted characters such as relaunching etc., or remove individual records using certain components within words. Often many of these can be solved by static methods, but from a certain depth a formula solution must be produced if one does not want to manually check each line.
Somewhere, one also wrote that Excel is actually superfluous, because Word can also tables.
NO, it cannot, it paints a table, but has absolutely nothing in common with an Excel table.
But even upwards, Excel’s boundaries are always closer to databases such as access, especially due to the dynamic array functions that came with 2021 and are always extended, but it’s not with a one-dimensional without real relationships to each other, you can still manage it well, but as soon as it’s really about ER models, Excel is at the end and should not be used for it, just for data security reasons. Shooting a table goes much faster than a database.
Excel is now really not the equivalent of success.
To get up, Excel knowledge is not necessary and not every company uses Excel.
It’s always enough what you need for your work.
Yeah. If I cut out an Excel table that feels 10 to 15 minutes time saving then it can already provide a personal positive effect
Again. Not every company works with Excel.
This knowledge will also be forgotten quickly and the bosses do not make such evaluations anyway. There are special departments for this.
Very good answer.
It’s enough to control what you need for your work.
Hi! Yes, I often experience that. This has or can have several backgrounds and is certainly not an indication of whether they are good or not.
Not at any work or chef’s place is Excel’s basic craftsmanship, and if you don’t have a usecase, why should you do your time?
Then, bosses often don’t do the stuff themselves, but have specialist areas such as controlling or accounting or IT. The less operational someone works the less he or you need to create Excel tables himself, then he gets the results delivered.
And: if someone has 30 years of professional experience today, then it might have been about in the 80’s career starters (I’m such a 🤭) and there was the topic of Excel still in the infancy or just so at the beginning. At the time, you had work, framework and others that came out as the first spreadsheets and you had to develop it yourself. No problem for me, because it’s still a little hobby today and I need it every day in the profession. But for other my peers and also many much younger colleagues, Excel is a book with 7 seals.
Gruss
The job of managers is usually to manage the company.
There it certainly needs other skills than knowledge what works with Excel.
Excel is always only means for the purpose, and there it is completely sufficient if there are employees who use it in such a way that the necessary numbers and data are processed accordingly.
However, since the job of managers is also to motivate employees, the part of the recognizing surprise belongs to it and is thought to be an appreciation.
There are always the exceptions:
Micromanagers who have fallen in love with numbers and Excel, but have little plan of their own task.
Excel experts who just keep this on what is possible in Excel, yet do their job as a manager very well.
You can even master Excel perfectly, and still be a rivet in the profession. That’s true.
Yeah, an “island gift” alone, doesn’t help you anymore. Especially since Excel is more like a “rule” and at the latest the AI will make those experts unnecessary.
Totally correct
Look forward to enjoy it and be proud of what you “draufhast”. Offer other your help if you think it could help, but don’t get intrusive.
In the initial period of Excel so around 1988 / 89, Jochen Haink had conducted the complete sales data in Excel with Microsoft. He had models that needed to calculate all night. On the latest CPU (80386) with co-processor. He knew what he knew and what he didn’t know. I did Excel support at the time and had similarly motivated fighters on the phone. It was a pleasure and challenge to solve their problems.
You can do extremely much with Excel. The most creative ideas come from the users themselves. I always like to use it, with the least really costing. …must stop
In my training as a businessman for office management, I had some functions that I had to learn. In vocational school was also one of the berries in Excel. It’s been a bit, but it used to be able to program some tables with WENN, WENN and OR.
Exel is long ago only a middle thing Word can table. This usually works if it doesn’t work out the right software programmed to the company that can do so alone.
Now yes 😉
It’s not time to create lists.
Define “the most necessary”? I think things like timekeeping, statistics, uncomplex planning, any comparisons, of course classic lists, get the most well – but I don’t count on management tasks. Even today there are good alternatives to Microsoft, digitization is progressing and not a few companies are no longer working with Excel.
I am head of department and can also only create tables and couple sums formulae ^^