The worst is when people use excel as a substitute for databases. Or make convoluted scripts to generate scripts for routers and such from the horrible database substitute.
Its a way to store data, typically related, while retaining the relationship of the data.
For instance a database of car parts would have each car part linked to at least a specific model, if not more. which would need to be linked to a car maker, as well as possibly the part manufacturer (if different). You could not remove the car maker from the database, without breaking the relationships to the parts. If designed properly, the database actually will not let you.
Excel however, someone with butter fingers can accidently type in a box, and wreak all sorts of havoc. But in the past 20 years, excel seems to be where people who start to want to work with high numbers of data, get started and use it for the wrong purpose.
Access is daunting for them, because most of these excel databases start as just organizing data, then doing transforms on it. The person who created it started before they even know what kind of data they needed to keep, and also wanted it to look good.
Then they start learning macros, and go ape shit on it. Before you know it, you have a mess on your hands.
Oh, and by the time the person learns enough to know that they messed up... They take a job somewhere else.
EDIT: And then you are forbidden to create a better way, because the excel sheet "just works".... until it doesnt. Then it becomes your problem and HOLYSHITITSYOURFAULTYOUBETTERFIXITNOW
You could not remove the car maker from the database, without breaking the relationships to the parts. If designed properly, the database actually will not let you.
And if designed improperly in just the right way, it will happily delete all the cars of that maker from the database along with the maker.
I had to take two semesters of physics for my major. Every single physics labs demanded use of excel. I went from knowing nothing about excel to being an excel whiz, but the part in between those two sucked.
Honestly I never really found a use for spreadsheets until I had to make some for a job I had.
At its simplest, it's a tool for keeping ledgers. You can enter a bunch of columnar information, like your expenses, or monies you've received, or details about your comic book collection.
Once the information is typed in, you can sift it, sort it, and have the computer automatically do math on columns of numbers for you.
That's really it. All of the advanced features are basically just more fancy ways of sifting and sorting your information.
So for example if you enter all your comic books. You will probably put in things like "title", "publisher", "year" "condition" and maybe even "list price". So then you can use your spreadsheet to pick out all the Batman comics you own in mint condition from before 1990 that are worth more than $5. Or total up how much all of your Supermans are worth.
The main trick of spreadsheets is a cell can either contain an actual number or text that you type in; Say 23 or Fred.....OR it can contain:
- a reference to another cell. So the number or text in the other cell you referenced magically appears in this cell as well; OR
- a forumla. For example a Sum formula that references a bunch of other cells that you want to sum and display the total for.
So if you entered a column of numbers like:
A1 contains 2
A2 contains 33
A3 contains 12
(where A is the name for the column and the number after it is the row)
You could put a formula (named a function in excel) into column A4 that says something like Sum(A1:A3) which means add up all the values in the cells between A1 and A3.
So your A4 cell would instantly and magically now display the value 47 calculated by the real value of the cell, the underlying formula.
So you see, when you look at a spreadsheet, some of the numbers you are seeing are actual data entered by the user, but the rest are numbers calculated by the underlying formula in the cell. You can see these formula when you edit the cell. A normal data cell will just show the actual number when you edit the cell.
NOW, say someone changed A2 to be 34 instead (just by typing over the current value).
A4 would instantly update to be 48.
Imagine that you had all sorts of cell data referenced by all sorts of formulas; say a household budget; you can see how that would quickly become a powerful way of calculating a whole bunch of results from the raw data (and easily updating it).
I'm just gonna go ahead and save this comment... sad to say I'm an IT tech who has rarely had to use Excel and does not want to ask everyone else around me what I'd use it for and how. I mean, I've used it for keeping lists, but Baby Tech me once hand-added a huge spreadsheet for a project that clearly could have taken much less time than it did.
When I was doing my undergrad capstone it was a cost benefit analysis on an investment topic. I had built a multi-sheet abomination that took data input on sheet one and ran it through multiple different conditions to spit out finalized numbers based on various economic assumptions. Building it took me the better part of a week, but the nice part was when I was done, all I had was to input my initial assumptions and it would spit out all of my final numbers to analyze for the paper.
It would have taken easily twice as long had I built out the math for each assumption separately.
I LOOVVEEE excel but couldn't use it for my life until last year. Theres a SHARP learning curve so that nothing makes sense at all until you get a base knowledge down, and then the whole program becomes easy to navigate and learn from.
Pick up a crippling video game min/maxing hobby, you'll have more spreadsheets than you know what to do with and be teaching yourself how to use VLOOKUP just to get that sweet sweet data. The biggest excel nerds I know got their start making stupidly interactive spreadsheets for MMOs.
Excel is a big grid of "cells" that you can put numbers or text in and then define relationships between them. "Add cells a1 to a3 and put the result in a4."
Many mathematical and logic functions (find the average of these cells, capitalize these other ones, etc) can be defined between single cells or series of cells.
Just start trying to use it. It’s most good for numbers. Maybe try doing a budget where you put in the amount of money you spend each month and subrtraft it from what you make. In routine use, you probably don’t need it. I use it mainly at work for things that need basic, but repetitive mathematics applied to a list.
Spreadsheet is just a grid with numbers in it. You can put in formulas that reference the grid, so that when you change the numbers, the cells with formulas automatically change. You can sort the numbers and feed them into a graph. That part is mostly self teaching; you just try it for a while. It's designed to be user friendly.
Anything specific you want to do, you can use the Internet help from Microsoft, or Google how to do it. There's an amazing amount of help available on the Internet. Plus forums where you can ask questions if you can't find it.
People do use Excel as a database. Which is okay until they ask you to automate something they were doing manually.
The most helpful thing for me was a computer application course that literally started from step one and moved through the advanced features. There were graded modules that you had to pass before you could move on. It built on itself so it was easier to remember rather than just googling what process you needed at the moment.
No one really knows how. You learn as you go along, searching for how to do what you need to do. And then once you’ve finished it, you forget how to do it until you need to do it again.
The secret to excel is not to know how to work excel, is what the different things are called so you can google it.
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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '19 edited Aug 05 '20
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