The Basics: What Exactly Is Microsoft Excel?
Welcome to our very first article in eLearning DevCon! We’re quite excited to get started on our discussions! Today, we wanted to stick to basics before we jump into the deeper jargon. After all, it is important to get a hold of the basic information in order to open the door toward further understanding.
In the case of MS Excel, opening that door is truly important. After all, you need only to mention the name of this program and people will more than likely roll their eyes up with disdain or defeat. MS Excel has a reputation that reaches extremes. There are people including staff in corporate environments who love it and there are those that simply cannot make heads or tales of it.
What is MS Excel?
Developed in 1985, this program was created with the purpose to help users better organize data and to even to do calculations with. On a more advanced level, people were able to create their own formulas to suit what they needed the program to do. You can even have it as the tool that you use to create your graphs, charts, and tables for you. All you need to do is to program it properly.
When you open up the program, you’ll be greeted by spreadsheets—tabs and tabs of them—all for your usage. The spreadsheets are usually thought to be intimidating because of the sheer number of the rows and all the columns just seemingly waiting there.
Points to Remember
MS Excel is a just a program—much like many others that you use on a daily basis. This means that it there is a learning curve and training that you need to receive (on-site is sometimes better than remote training) which will allow you to become a proficient user of the Microsoft software. MS Excel may be intimidating but that’s only at the start. Once you get past your discomfort with the formulas, you will find that there was nothing to be worried about at all.
Do you make use of MS Excel? Did you think it was highly intimidating at first?
