Examples of what excel can do

Contents

1. Tools, Calculators and Simulations
2. Dashboards and Reports with Charts
3. Automate Jobs with VBA macros
4. Solver Add-in & Statistical Analysis
5. Data Entry and Lists
6. Games in Excel!
7. Educational use with Interactive features
8. Create Cheatsheets with Excel
9. Diagrams, Mockups, Gantt Charts
10. Fetch live data from web
11. Excel as a Database

Excel is one of the most used software in today’s digital world. Most people quickly open up an Excel file when they need to write or calculate anything. It is like “paper”. (remember those graph notebooks from school times..)

Actually, this is not only specific to Microsoft’s Excel but most of the spreadsheet software like open office or google sheets. However, we will focus on Excel and what can you do with it today, as it offers huge flexibility you will discover below.

Let’s start with the main usage areas of Excel. As we all know, spreadsheets are designed to make calculations easier. So they contain “formulas”. They allow us to make basic math like summing, multiplying, finding average as well as advanced calculations like regression analysis, conversions, and so on.

When we combine these powerful math features with some tables, lists, or other UI elements, we can come up with a calculator. And most of the time they will be dynamic (meaning that when you change a parameter all the rest of the calculations will adapt accordingly)

Below see an example from our past studies as Someka:

We have built this calculator for an app development company executive. He was changing the parameters he wants and sees the outcomes immediately.

This is great especially when you try to make big “models” in excel. Financial Modeling is one of the most used application areas of these big models. If we tried to do this with pen-paper (which used to be the way once upon a time) it would be horrible I guess:

Financial modeling is also being used to test the excel skills of experts. They even make a competition for it: ModelOff

We also have a tool for startups to make a feasibility study playing with their own variables:

This is a comprehensive Feasibility Study Excel Template for app startups with download projections, costs, financial calculations, charts, dashboard, and more.

The business world is demanding. It is not enough just to make the calculations, set up your tables, and write the text. You have to create pie charts, trends, line graphs, and many more. Whether you are getting prepared for your pitch or make a presentation in your company, you can use Excel’s chart features.

Pivot Tables

One of the greatest features which Excel offers is Pivot tables. This is an advanced Excel tool that helps you create dynamic summary reports from raw data very easily. After you create your table you can play with parameters easily with a drag and drop interface.

It looks like this:

Dashboards

Complex excel models do have lots of variables, calculations, and settings. And instead of managing all variables one by one on different sheets, different places it is a very good idea to put them together like a “control panel”.

You can think dashboards as cockpits of planes.

Recently dashboards became very popular. There are lots of training videos about how to build and design control panels for our excel models. Actually, they are not so different from the rest of the calculations.

But the main idea is: if there is something you may want to change, later on, don’t write it directly in the formula but bind it to a variable.

Let’s say you are building a sales report for your manager. He asks you to make the file changeable so that he can see the results in US dollars or Euros according to the situation. Instead of writing an Fx rate into the calculations, you should bind this to a cell that you can play with later on.

Like this:

This may seem so obvious to some of you. But this is the basic approach of all dashboards in excel files. Of course, you can improve it with more complex formulas, buttons, cool charts, and even VBA but the main idea stands still.

Here is an example of a complete set of the dashboard:

Or a dashboard for a livestock feasibility study:

If you are interested in Sales Dashboards, you may want to check out our Excel template:

This is an interactive Sales Report Template in Excel. Features a dashboard with profitability, sales analysis and charts.

Other than that, Marketing ROI Calculator would be very helpful to prioritize your marketing campaigns in Excel:

It will provide essential metrics and help you to manage all your marketing campaign channels in one place.

Most of the users who use Excel extensively are already coding. But if you ask them whether they know how to code most probably they will say no. Of course, writing formulas is a very small part of the things you can do with VBA. It is a strong programming language that lets you create small scripts (macros), user forms, user-defined functions, add-ins, and even games! (which we will touch below separately)

I will not dive into VBA here since it is a detailed area. But there are some basic things that will be beneficial to know for those who use Excel often:

• You can record macros for repeating jobs: You don’t need to code from scratch. Just click on the record macro button and it will write the code for you in the background. (If you want, you can modify later on)
• It extends the borders of Excel world. If you feel like you are limited somehow in Excel, you are more like an advanced user. It is time to get a little bit into VBA.
• You can create user forms with VBA only. If you see something like this, know that it is using VBA:

VBA is quite powerful and if you work with Excel extensively you won’t regret learning a bit. For example wouldn’t it be nice if you could send bulk emails from an Excel spreadsheat with a button click?

It is not surprising for spreadsheet software like Excel to offer advanced math techniques to make more complicated studies. (To be honest, I am not a statistics expert but with an engineering background, I will try to do my best to explain the basics. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong)

Data analysis is a trending concept for recent years with the development of powerful computers and improved software. We are collecting and recording much much more data compared to the past. Take a look at this chart to understand what I mean:

Especially this part:

“more data has been created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of the human race”

It is a bit frightening, isn’t it? Ok, we are not going to dive into the “Big Data” world. Let’s get back to our humble excel world.

As we collect this much data, some people will want to analyze it. Otherwise, it makes no sense to spend billions of dollars on those data centers. Excel has built-in functions for basic descriptive statistics methods like Mean, Median, Mode, Standard Deviation, Variance etc.

But if we want to go a bit further I will mention two Excel features (actually add-ins) at this step: Solver and Regression Analysis

Solver

Have you ever heard of “optimization”? When we have more than one parameters that affect the outcome, we can only have a most optimized solution rather than a maximum solution. This may sound weird but it is very valid in our daily lives.

One of the simplest and popular examples is: Farmer Fence Optimization Problem

“A farmer owns 500 meters of the fence and wants to enclose the largest possible rectangular area. How should he use his fence?”

This is a very simple example to explain what a solver does. But actually, you can run much more complicated data sets with Solver.

Regression Analysis

Since this is a bit advanced topic for this blog post, I will only touch the surface.

In most simple terms, regression analysis helps you find the correlation between the variables. For example, you may want to know what is the relation between the number of birds flown over your head and the money you earned today. (sorry for the silly example. No, I am not curious about it You will need to gather sample data and put in an analysis to see if there is any correlation.

It seems something like this:

You put your data:

Run the regression from Analysis Toolpak:

And get results something like this:

Of course, there is much more sophisticated software to run data analysis. However, there is a joke in business intelligence communities:

• What is the most used feature of any business intelligence solution?
• It is “Export to Excel”

Looks like we won’t stop using Excel anytime soon.

Coming back from boring data analysis world, let’s mention the simplest and most handy usage area of excel: Make Lists!

It is already self-explaining so I won’t bother with the details. When you want to list down some simple data, take notes, create to-do lists, or anything. Just open the excel and write it down. Did we mention that “paper alternative” thing? Oh yes, we did.

A lead list example:

You can also convert PDF files into Excel files in order to make it easier to work on. This can be done automatically with some software. But some pdf files cannot be processed automatically (like handwritten documents, scanned invoices, etc). You will need to do it manually.

When you want to play with the data on a web page, you can easily copy-paste it into an excel file and then you can sort, filter or do anything you want:

For example, Fortune 500 US List:

Everybody loves to-do lists. And we have created useful to-do list in Excel for business or personal uses. Check it out, it is free:

To-Do List Excel Template

We already mentioned this in the VBA section above. But it is worth to talk a bit more.

Visual Basic allows you to code complex things like games as well. But of course, don’t expect a GTA or FIFA. Things like chess, sudoku, or Monopoly is OK. But, a few people have gone far and created more complicated things, like an RPG game. Take a look at this:

This game has been created by an accountant, Cary Walkin. I know it doesn’t look great but it is in Excel! (you can play it at the office )

Another example:

A flight simulator in Excel?? Is it the same thing we use to sum up the sales figures? Lol yeah.

You can also embed flash games into Excel (like Super Mario, Angry Birds or whatever) But I count them off as they are not built with VBA.

As we mentioned in the Financial Modeling section, Excel is quite good for creating dynamic results according to the inputs. We get the benefit of this to create interactive tools.

One example that comes to my mind is this spreadsheet, guys from San Francisco have prepared:

I haven’t tried it myself but an Excel tutorial in Excel. Liked the idea!

Another similar interactive Excel learning tool is from Keyskillset:

Actually, this is not completely in Excel and works as separate software but I liked how they combine the Excel training with gamification features.

Quizzes are good tools for interactive learning and you can prepare in Excel as well. A quizmaster template from indzara.com:

A student lesson plan template in excel which we have prepared recently:

You can learn Excel in Excel!

As said: Practice Makes Perfect!

You can test your Excel skills in Excel with Excel Formulas Trainer:

This is actually an Excel template prepared with VBA macros and basically works as a practice worksheet. It has 30 sections and around 100 questions. You can learn VLOOKUP, IF and much more excel formulas by doing. If you like the idea of “learning by doing”, then it is worth to check.

Also, this online course from GoSkills is for everyone as well, covering beginner, intermediate and advanced lessons.

By cheat sheets, we don’t refer to the piece of paper with information written down on it that an unethical person might create if they weren’t prepared for a test. What we mean is a reference tool that provides simple, brief instructions for accomplishing a specific task. We use this term because it is highly popular recently.

For example, this is a cheat sheet:

This compacted and summarized info is very useful in many aspects. When you try to memorize things, lookup, reference, etc. And can be easily created with Excel. Let’s make a Google search for a cheat sheet made in Excel.

This one is from Dave Child (cheatography.com) and I was also using this one I first learned HTML:

The last example is an Excel Cheatsheet made for Excel shortcuts:

Of course, if you are looking for stylish infographics and cheat sheets, you should check out design software.

I know Excel is maybe not the best tool to do these. There are great programs or websites to make mockups, diagrams, brainstorming, mind-mapping, or project scheduling. But there are habits as well. Even though I am very open to try and use these kinds of brand-new tools, I find myself using excel for a mockup or a mind map. (select shapes, put notes, put arrows, change colors etc. Omg it is tedious)

Gantt charts can be a bit old-school as agile project management methods are increasing in popularity, they are still being used widely. There are several Gantt chart excel templates on the web.

A Gantt chart example from vertex42.com:

I just found out a reporting structure mockup I have prepared in Excel once upon a time:

By the way, did you see our Automatic Organization Chart Generator?

This is an Excel template that lets you create organization charts from Excel lists with a click of a button. It can be useful for small business owners and Human Resources departments.

These type of charts are directly related to Excel as most of the companies already keep their data in spreadsheets. But I also know people who even build their website mockups in Excel (with links to other sections, placement of buttons, sliders etc.).

Sometimes you may need your excel files to be updated automatically from a live data source. For example, if you are making a stock market analysis and want the latest data of some stock prices at NYSE, you can connect your Excel file to a data feed and let it take the latest info automatically (unless you want to input them one by one!)

As this is a comprehensive topic I will leave it for another post. But here is a few things you can fetch into excel:

• Stock prices
• Match results of soccer, NBA, NFL or any sports games (from live score sites)
• Fx rates
• Real-time flight data of airports
• Any info in a shared database (whether it is your company intranet or public)

This topic is getting more and more important as most data is kept on cloud systems. We don’t download info bits to our computers as we used to do in the past. So, Microsoft is working hard to improve the web integration of Excel.

Recommended Reading: Can Excel Extract Data From Website?

Yes, it is not the best idea to use Excel as a database. Because it is not designed for this purpose. Queries will take a long time especially when data gets bigger. It can be unreliable sometimes and not very secure. It is all accepted. However, we are not always after a complete set of the database systems and it can serve us as a mini-warehouse for our little data.

For example, if you keep records of your invoice data and want to make some sales analysis, it can be a good starting point. If later, you want to see more details, want to record more breakdowns you will need to move to a “real database”. It can be Access, SQL or anything. Just keep an eye on your Excel file because it has a maximum of 1 million rows.

Some of you may say “hey, it is more than enough, isn’t it?”

Generally yes. But you cannot believe how data increase in size when you want to see details. I remember when I was working as an analyst in a game development company, we were holding records of 1+ billion rows of data.

Precisely because of that, we have built some of our Excel templates (which is the favorite feature of all the users) with a database section. You may check our Invoice Generators and see how invoice recording would be super easy in Excel!

Conclusion

As the internet gets more available for everybody people started to use collaboration platforms more than before. In this aspect, online spreadsheet applications, like Google Sheets, increase in popularity and stands as a competitor to Microsoft’s Excel. Other free alternatives like open office or libre office are also popular.  But if you need the advanced functionalities of Excel there is still no substitute.

Microsoft is improving the software actively. PowerPivot, Power BI, and Excel Online are all brand new features they developed recently. We will wait and see how things evolve in the following years. (investintech.com has made interviews with Excel experts about the future of Excel)

I tried to cover most of the things that can be done with Excel. If I have missed anything or if you find any errors, let me know by commenting down or sending an email.

Also, don’t forget to check our Excel Templates Collection. You may find something useful for yourself:

Excel Templates and Spreadsheets – Someka

Complete List of Things You Can Do With Excel

• Tools, Calculators and Simulations.
• Dashboards and Reports with Charts.
• Automate Jobs with VBA macros.
• Solver Add-in & Statistical Analysis.
• Data Entry and Lists.
• Games in Excel!
• Educational use with Interactive features.
• Create Cheatsheets with Excel.

What are 7 things you can use Excel for?

More Than a Spreadsheet: 7 Things You Can Do with Microsoft Excel

• Accounting. Excel has long been a trusted accounting tool.
• Data Entry, Storage, and Verification. At its core, Excel is data-entry software.
• Data Visualisation.
• Data Forecasting.
• Inventory Tracking.
• Project Management.
• Creating Forms.

What are the 10 uses of Microsoft Excel?

Top 10 Uses of Microsoft Excel in Business

• Business Analysis. The number 1 use of MS Excel in the workplace is to do business analysis.
• People Management.
• Managing Operations.
• Performance Reporting.
• Office Administration.
• Strategic Analysis.
• Project Management.
• Managing Programs.

What are the 3 common uses for Excel?

The main uses of Excel include:

• Data entry.
• Data management.
• Accounting.
• Financial analysis.
• Charting and graphing.
• Programming.
• Time management.
• Task management.

What can Excel be used for at home?

You can use Excel to store, organize, and analyze data. Excel is Microsoft’s spreadsheet program, a part of the Microsoft 365 suite of products. Here’s a crash course in the basics of using Microsoft Excel.

What are the five uses of spreadsheet?

What Is the Purpose of Using a Spreadsheet?

• Business Data Storage. A spreadsheet is an easy way to store all different kinds of data.
• Accounting and Calculation Uses.
• Budgeting and Spending Help.
• Assisting with Data Exports.
• Data Sifting and Cleanup.
• Generating Reports and Charts.
• Business Administrative Tasks.

How can excel help you as a student?

Excel reduces the difficulty of plotting data and allows students a means for interpreting the data. You can also reverse the traditional process of analyzing data by giving students a completed chart and see if they can reconstruct the underlying worksheet.

How excel is useful in our life?

Excel helps you in career management, time management, learning management, life management, and so on. If you are a student, then you can manage all your expenses with the help of excel.

Is Excel a good skill?

It contains a spreadsheet that can automatically input, calculate and analyze data, which makes it a valuable skill for the workplace. Employees can use Excel to accomplish an abundance of daily tasks.

What are 3 uses of spreadsheets?

The three most common general uses for spreadsheet software are to create budgets, produce graphs and charts, and for storing and sorting data. Within business spreadsheet software is used to forecast future performance, calculate tax, completing basic payroll, producing charts and calculating revenues.

How are spreadsheets useful for users?

A spreadsheet is a tool that is used to store, manipulate and analyze data.These programs allow users to work with data in a variety of ways to create budgets, forecasts, inventories, schedules, charts, graphs and many other data based worksheets.

What are the Excel features?

Features of Microsoft Excel

• Add Header and Footer. MS Excel allows us to keep the header and footer in our spreadsheet document.
• Find and Replace Command.
• Password Protection.
• Data Filtering.
• Data Sorting.
• Built-in formulae.
• Create different charts (Pivot Table Report)
• Automatically edits the result.

How do I make Excel fun?

Excel can be Exciting – 15 fun things you can do with your spreadsheet in less than 5 seconds

1. Change the shape / color of cell comments.
2. Filter unique items from a list.
3. Sort from Left to Right.
4. Hide the grid lines from your sheets.
5. Add rounded border to your charts, make them look smooth.

How can excel functions help in future career?

Benefits of Excel for Employees

1. Sharpening Your Skill Set.
2. Improving Your Efficiency and Productivity.
3. Making Yourself a More Valuable Member of the Company.
4. Making You Better at Organizing Data.
5. It Can Make Your Job Easier.
6. It Creates Greater Efficiency and Heightens Productivity.

Is Excel worth learning in 2021?

Q: Is VBA still relevant in 2021? Excel is a program that is still worked with a lot by many companies/people, so it is still relevant to learn VBA in 2021.

Is Excel still relevant 2021?

In the age of data analysis, Microsoft Excel is still necessary.One such program, which often goes unnoticed when it comes to the analysis of data, is Microsoft Excel. Microsoft excel is still relevant in the age of data analysis and advanced technologies.

What are the basic things to learn in Excel?

Basic Skills for Excel Users

• Sum or Count cells, based on one criterion or multiple criteria.
• Build a Pivot Table to summarize date.
• Write a formula with absolute and relative references.
• Create a drop down list of options in a cell, for easier data entry.
• Sort a list of text and/or numbers without messing up the data.

What can I make a spreadsheet of?

10 Amazingly Useful Spreadsheet Templates to Organize Your Life

• Excel Money Management Template.
• To-Do List.
• Medication List.
• Travel Budget Worksheet.
• Checkbook Register.
• Home Inventory Checklist.
• Meal Planner.
• Project Schedule Template.

How do I make an Excel spreadsheet look pretty?

Excel for Architects – 9 Steps to Beautiful Spreadsheets

1. Choose a good font.
2. Align your data.
3. Give your data some space.
4. Define your headers.
5. Choose your colors carefully.
6. Shade alternate rows for readability.
7. Use Grids Sparingly.
8. Create cell styles for consistency.

How do you use a spreadsheet as a planner?

Here’s how to set up your weekly planner using Google Sheets.

1. Step 1: Go to spreadsheets.google.com and click “Template Gallery” to see all available templates.
2. Step 2: Choose “Schedule” template.
3. Step 3: Set the starting date in cell C2.
4. Step 1: Make yourself a copy of this spreadsheet:

What’s a worksheet in Excel?

The term Worksheet used in Excel documents is a collection of cells organized in rows and columns. It is the working surface you interact with to enter data. Each worksheet contains 1048576 rows and 16384 columns and serves as a giant table that allows you to organize information.

Excel. Chances are, that word alone inspires visions of lengthy spreadsheets, complicated macros, and the occasional pivot table or bar graph.

It’s true—with more than one billion Microsoft Office users globally, Excel has become the professional standard in offices across the globe for pretty much anything that requires management of large amounts of data.

But, if you think Excel is only good for making you cross-eyed while looking at a bunch of numbers and financial reports, think again. As Tomasz Tunguz points out, there are tons of uses of Excel in business (and beyond) outside of simple spreadsheets. In fact, the potential uses are seemingly endless.

There’s no way for us to compile a list that captures every one of Excel’s possible applications (even if you were up for reading a War and Peace-sized listicle).

However, in an effort to demonstrate the power and flexibility of everybody’s favorite spreadsheet tool, we’ve pulled together different ways that you could use Excel—both professionally, personally, and just for the fun of it.

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All about numbers

Of course, the core purpose of Excel all boils down to numbers. If you need to sort, retrieve, and analyze a large (or even small!) amount of data, Excel makes it a breeze.

Here are a few broad categories to keep in mind when it comes to implementing Excel for anything numbers-related.

1. Calculating

Find yourself running the same calculations over and over again? Build yourself a totally customized calculator in Excel by programming your commonly-used formulas. That way, you just need to punch in your digits and Excel will spit the answer out for you—no elbow grease required.

2. Accounting

Budget plans, forecasts, expense tracking, financial reports, loan calculators, and more. Excel was pretty much designed to meet these different accounting needs. And, considering that 89 percent of companies utilize Excel for its various accounting functions, it obviously fits the bill.

Excel even has numerous different spreadsheet templates to make all of those processes that much easier.

3. Charting

Pie charts, scatter charts, line charts, bar charts, area charts, column charts—the list goes on and on. If you need to find a way to represent data in a more visual and digestible way, Excel’s ability to transform rows and columns of digits into beautiful charts is sure to become one of your favorite things about it.

Want more information about the types of charts you can create in Excel? This article is a helpful resource.

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4. Inventory tracking

Tracking inventory can be a headache. Fortunately, Excel can help to keep employees, business owners, or even individuals organized and on top of their inventory—before any major problems crop up.

Making a plan

Let’s move on from the numbers—there are plenty of things that Excel can help you plan and organize that don’t necessarily involve endless rows of digits.

5. Calendars and schedules

Need to map out a content calendar for your blog or website? Lesson plans for your classroom? A PTO schedule for you and all of your co-workers? A daily schedule for you or your family? When it comes to various calendars, Excel can be surprisingly robust.

6. Seating charts

From a large corporate luncheon to a wedding, arranging a seating chart can be a royal headache. Fortunately, Excel can make it a total breeze. If you’re a real whiz, you’ll be able to automatically create your seating chart using your spreadsheet of RSVPs. Need help getting this done? This article provides a detailed walkthrough of how you can create a seating chart in Excel.

7. Goal planning worksheet

From professional goals to fitness goals to financial goals, it helps to have something to keep you focused and on track. Enter the beauty of Excel. Using the tool, you can create various worksheets, logs, and planning documents to help you monitor your progress—and, hopefully, cross the finish line.

8. Mock-ups

Excel might not be the first platform you think of when it comes to design. But, believe it or not, you can use the tool to put together various mock-ups and prototypes. In fact, it’s a surprisingly popular choice for creating website wireframes and dashboards.

Getting stuff done

Want to kick your productivity into high gear? Well, Excel can swoop in and save the day with a variety of uses that can help you tackle your tasks and to-dos with ease and organization.

9. Task list

Say goodbye to your standard pen and paper to-do list. With Excel, you can make a far more robust task list—and even track your progress on those larger to-dos that are currently on your plate.

10. Checklist

Similarly, you can create a simple checklist that allows you to tick off the things you’ve purchased or accomplished—from a grocery list to a roster of to-dos for an upcoming marketing campaign.

11. Project management charts

We’ve already touched on the fact that Excel is a total beast when it comes to creating charts. And, this concept holds true when it comes to various charts for project management.

From waterfall charts to manage your team’s progress to kanban style boards (just like Trello!) to keep things organized, there are tons of ways that Excel can help keep your project on track.

12. Time logs

You know that tracking time can be a huge asset to you and your productivity. While there are plenty of fancy apps and tools to help meet that need, you can think of Excel as the original tool for logging your time. And, it still serves as a suitable option today.

Involving other people

Need to collect information from other people? Survey tools and forms are one option. But, rest assured, you can also create your own in Excel.

13. Forms

From simple to complicated, Excel is a great option for creating forms. You can even program various drop-down menus so that users can select their choice from a pre-set list.

14. Quizzes

Trying to test somebody else’s—or even your own—knowledge of a subject? In Excel, you can create a bank of questions and answers in one worksheet, and then instruct Excel to quiz you in another.

Staying in touch

Managing relationships is crucial to your success both professionally and personally. Fortunately, Excel makes it easy to keep in touch.

15. CRM

Need a lightweight CRM to stay top of mind for your customers? You can make one in Excel. And, the best part? Building your own means it will be totally customizable. Sales Hacker also put together a nifty set of free sales excel templates you can use to help get started!

16. Mailing list

Data doesn’t just have to involve numbers. Excel is also great at managing and sorting large amounts of names and addresses—making it the perfect solution for your invite list for that company holiday party or the mailing list for that large promotion or campaign.

Using Excel, you can also mail merge—which makes it that much easier to print address labels and other necessary materials.

You can also apply a similar concept to create things like directories, RSVP lists, and other rosters that involve a large amount of information about people.

Just for fun

Excel doesn’t need to be all work and no play. There are plenty of other fun things you can create using the spreadsheet tool.

17. Historical logs

Whether you want to keep track of the various craft beers you’ve tasted, the workouts you’ve completed, or something else entirely, you can think of Excel as your go-to resource for keeping those things sorted and logged.

18. Sudoku puzzles

Love Sudoku puzzles? As it turns out, you can make your own in Excel. Or, if you find yourself stuck on a particularly challenging one, you can enlist the help of Excel to help you get it figured out!

Need help creating the Sudoku solver and generator? This post will get you well on your way!

19. Word cloud

Word clouds might not be the most scientific representations of data. But, they’re a fun (not to mention beautiful way) to gain an understanding of what words are being utilized most. You guessed it—you can create one using Excel. Here’s how to use information from Excel to create a word cloud in Wordle.

20. Art and animations

The capabilities of Excel likely extend far beyond what you’d initially anticipate. In fact, many people have used the tool to create some downright awesome art—from pixelated portraits to animations.

21. Trip planner

Have a vacation coming up? Make sure you have everything covered by creating yourself a helpful itinerary before you pack your bags and head out. Excel even has a handy trip planner template you can use to make sure you don’t miss anything (from your budget to airline information!).

Over to you

This might seem like a lengthy list. But, rest assured, it barely scratches the surface of all of the different things—aside from simple spreadsheets—that Excel is capable of. From lists to charts to design mock-ups, the different uses of Excel are seemingly limitless.

Feeling intimidated? Don’t worry — you can learn Excel online, all at your own pace, and become a spreadsheet ninja in no time.

Do you have something cool you like to create using Excel? Let us know in the comments!