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MS Excel is amazing. I hate it.

Blue Skies

Blue Skies

Banned
Mar 27, 2019
9,224
I get it, it is a great program and has been for many years.
but i fucking hate it as a student.
Doing a mandatory excel tutorial and just UGH.
Never been a computer guy, but. I really do need to learn excel.
i just HATE typing and doing repetitive computer tasks.

is there anyway to reframe this in my mind?

has any one ever come to love office products?

i want to have a real job someday, and I know it's necessary to knowexcel.
help.
I just zone out when being taught this shit.

finance major now
 
hyouko

hyouko

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,207
You say that you hate doing repetitive computer tasks. If you're using Excel right, it should be helping you to cut down on repetitive tasks. Do you find that to be the case?

I always say that Excel is like the Swiss Army Knife of data analysis. It's not the best tool for any one job, but it's a convenient way to do an OK job on a lot of things (particularly, quick charts and visuals). You should have other tools in your toolkit, too; I recommend some basic knowledge of Python so that you can script and automate your way through the really boring stuff :-) .
 
Stinkles

Stinkles

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,459
I am probably one of the most tenured Microsoft employees relative to my ability to use or understand Excel.

Once I had to ask how to add all the numbers in a column (or maybe it was a row) because I couldn't find a button or tab to do it.

The answer (of course) is that it happens automatically. Or was the last time I encountered that "depth" of excel skill requirement.

And yet I do use it for organizing information - and we use it for stuff like AI dialog permutations - so you'll have a row of "Marine throwing grenade" and each cell horizontally is a permutation of "grenade out!" And each column might be the relative emotional state or combat scenario - so "angry" and "frightened" and so on.

For me it's really a tool for organizing small ideas and their variants, but watching an Excel expert is amazing - Ed Fries from the olden days of Xbox was previously one of the bigger excel contributors/inventors - and he was (obviously) brilliant with it, but I've even seen people make text adventures IN excel - playable, smooth even.
 
bossmonkey

bossmonkey

Avenger
Nov 9, 2017
2,501
It sounds like you're doing a lot of listening and not as much building. You need to actually do the exercises and build out the formulas yourself. That's the most important part. I had an excel heavy major and it helped me to get the basics but i didn't truly get it until i was out in the world and had to build practical formulas.
 
Massicot

Massicot

RPG Site
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,232
United States
Excel has a lot of ways where you can work on making it as un-repetitive as possible.

Repeating a certain operation over and over again? Learn how to macro it to a button click.
Hate having to rechart data in the same way over and over? Figure out your indexs and vlookups and pivot tables and all that.
Once you get basic formulas down you can learn how to hook into something like running a script from windows task scheduler so stuff is done automatically without your input at all.

I guess to generalize a bit, Excel has a lot of tools to avoid having to be repetitive, and maybe figuring how to do as little actual busy-work as possible can be an angle you approach it from.
 
Baji Boxer

Baji Boxer

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,376
As you learn more it can be a very fast way to make otherwise repetitive tasks mich easier.
 
Quixzlizx

Quixzlizx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,591
You are going to be one useless finance major if you don't learn Excel.

Edit: And a fun challenge is using Excel to automate as much of your work as possible. That will also be useful in finance when you're running the same reports every month/quarter/etc.
 
Giant Panda

Giant Panda

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,688
It's great, but I have to deal with a bunch of people that attempt to use it like a database and of course it provides no data integrity.
 
OP
OP
Blue Skies

Blue Skies

Banned
Mar 27, 2019
9,224
Massicot said:
I guess to generalize a bit, Excel has a lot of tools to avoid having to be repetitive, and maybe figuring how to do as little actual busy-work as possible can be an angle you approach it from.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

See, this is what I wanted to hear
Thank you

I've always been a "finish everything as fast as possible" type of worker, so i guess i should learn it to eventually save time. Thanks!
 
donkey

donkey

Sumo Digital Dev
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
4,851
Just start making roller coasters in Excel. Everything else will fall into place.

 
Last edited:

Deleted member 4614

Oct 25, 2017
6,345
The secret to computer work is to find creative ways for the computer to do work for you. Short cuts, scripts, cron-jobs, full-fledged applications.

As one guy on twitter put it, if you dive in deep enough, you have access to a robot army (cloud computing). They're just centralised for cooling purposes.
 
Tunesmith

Tunesmith

Fraud & Player Security
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,936
Eoin

Eoin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,103
An Excel tutorial that involves "typing and doing repetitive computer tasks" sounds like a pretty poor tutorial to me.

Maybe that's something to consider. What is the tutorial making you do? Perhaps we can suggest a better way for you to learn the same thing.
 
BennyWhatever

BennyWhatever

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,776
US
I love excel. Most of my passion started when I started making digital D&D sheets for friends, then making damage calculators for Phantasy Star Zero.

I'm SUPER excited for the update coming soon that enables "xlookup", the new and improved version of "vlookup." It's going to be lit.
 
Agentnibs

Agentnibs

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
563
Excel runs the world!



but I hate the formula syntax. It gets downright disgusting looking when try to do anything remotely complex.
 
Reckheim

Reckheim

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
9,369
Blue Skies said:
Why not finance?

i dont want to strictly work in finance, I think management is my ultimate goal, but I want to get hired right out of college and I feel like Finance would be good for that.
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you literally said 'i just HATE typing and doing repetitive computer tasks.'; That's a huge part of finance.
 
Kwigo

Kwigo

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
8,025
Blue Skies said:
Oh ok

but Yea, what Im saying is, i want to learn to love it.
I want to beat that part of me that hates it
Click to expand...
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You don't have to use it perfectly. I don't know anyone that really uses excel with more than 1% of its feature.

Learn how to create some charts, learn how to make functional and pretty charts, learn how to do a gantt chart and stuff like that, and you'll know everything that you need to know.

Also, older generations suck at excel. You'll always be the young tech savvy guy that knows excel, even if you're bad at it.

Just stop worrying so much about it.
 
Version 3.0

Version 3.0

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,154
Don't want to use Excel? Be the boss. I have bosses who are so poor in Excel that they have everything printed for them.
 
Irnbru

Irnbru

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
2,128
Seattle
Lol, my job is getting our folks off of excel as much as humanly possible. Learn some sql and python if you want to be valuable in finance in the next 5 years
 
OP
OP
Blue Skies

Blue Skies

Banned
Mar 27, 2019
9,224
Reckheim said:
you literally said 'i just HATE typing and doing repetitive computer tasks.'; That's a huge part of finance.
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Yea but I hate being unemployed more lol

and i want to be employed,even ifit's a job I hate, until I find a way to work on my own.

i don't like engineering, programming, or the medical fields, so business is my only option, and Finance/accounting seem to be guaranteed jobs, so I'm a do that
But I prefer finance, since I've always had an interest in markets
 
Amathene

Amathene

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
585
I think actually working for the first time out of University really opened my eyes to how useful it was. I was average at it during school, didn't really care for it or see how it served me outside of the classroom. But when I start working, it became pretty much ingrained in my work life.

One way I found to make it more interesting is to never do a task the way someone asks you to do it. Chances are, there's a more efficient and scalable way to do things. Master your ability to be creative and efficient (ie. Make something that accomplishes what you've been asked AND more). It'll earn you some quick wins and can help you progress in the early parts of your career, especially in finance/accounting jobs.
 
Lace

Lace

Member
Oct 27, 2017
902
The world secretly run's on Excel. It's shouldn't be used for half the tasks it is used for, but gosh darn it why change. If you're interested in finance or accounting it's a tool you'll need to understand.
 
TrueSloth

TrueSloth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,065
Excel is fuckin mind blowing to me. I'm only a beginner/intermediate user, but it's amazing.
 
WeAreStarStuff

WeAreStarStuff

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,223
Washington DC
Finance/Econ undergrand degree. Data science graduate degree. I love Excel, I know Python and R are better for many things and I fully embrace them, but I will always love Excel. There is an incredible amount that you can do with it.
 
Watership

Watership

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,116
Excel is super powerful. The longer you use it, the more you realize how great it is. This applies to most spreadsheets, even Google sheets is great, but Excel is really God tier.
 
reelbigeddy

reelbigeddy

Member
Nov 16, 2017
845
UK
I really need to learn excel. There's so much in my job that could be made easier, but no one has the knowledge or wants to put the time in to do it.
 

Deleted member 11008

User requested account closure
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
6,627
Blue Skies said:
i don't like engineering, programming, or the medical fields, so business is my only option, and Finance/accounting seem to be guaranteed jobs, so I'm a do that
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

My major actually is programming, but for some reason I only hit works at the retail and/or finance fields... which is fine for me, I don't like traditional software jobs. I will tell you a secret, if you know a bit of programming and SQL and you work for non-specialided places (I mean, about traditional software developing), you will be a god basically.
 
Yahsper

Yahsper

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,522
Honestly, if you're using excel right, you only have to do everything once.

If you have a task you have to do often, search for formulas that automate it. Learn how to link up several excel sheets. Learn how to import data through csv files. Excel can do anything you want. Just Google answers if you don't know how to do a particular task efficiently.

Same basic programming lessons can also do a lot to teach you how to combine several formulas together.
 
Common Knowledge

Common Knowledge

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,236
Eh, Excel can be intimidating at first but once you make it a normal part of your work it's not a big deal at all. Boring if anything. You can do a quick google search to solve most issues you run into.
 
Masoyama

Masoyama

Attempted to circumvent a ban with an alt account
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,648
Personally, I use Matlab for anything that needs repetitive computation or analysis but I have enough sense to export it to Excel when anyone else needs to see my data.
 
Reckheim

Reckheim

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
9,369
Blue Skies said:
Yea but I hate being unemployed more lol

and i want to be employed,even ifit's a job I hate, until I find a way to work on my own.

i don't like engineering, programming, or the medical fields, so business is my only option, and Finance/accounting seem to be guaranteed jobs, so I'm a do that
But I prefer finance, since I've always had an interest in markets
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thats fair, I just hope you know what you're getting your self into.

I'm sure a finance Major isn't a cheap endeavor.
 
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