Technical Tuesday: Microsoft Excel as part of Office 365

I have been using Microsoft Excel for years now. Just to do simple things. Such as make a graph or to make a monthly budget. (Which everyone should have) But a lot of companies and people use it every day in a variety of ways.

One of my old employers used it to keep a running list of customers that had been cold calls. Another used it to keep a list of supplies on hand. And a friend of mine who plays in her HS Marching band uses it to create a list of Drill Sets and Notes.

From Financial Advisors to HS Marching band… Microsoft excel seems to have a lot going on and it just added two new features. But first let me explain what excel is.

What is Excel and What are some ways to use it?

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program. It can be used to make list, store large quantities of data, design spreadsheets to show averages. Its essentially a large very smart calculator that enjoys long complicated math problems. There are lots of templates available to help you create almost anything you may want to on the Microsoft website. You can visit it here.

One of the easiest ways to use excel is to create a chart or a graph with sets of data and since this is also one of the most popular ways. Excel recently got some new features.

What are the New Features?

Excel has had some great things happening and two of them were spotlighted in this months Office 365 email. Office 365 is a subscription program that I currently am a part of. You can read all about that here.

The first one is that with the new Android Excel app you can take a picture of printed tables and then edit them in the application. Instead of having to manually enter the information from one table into another. This seems like it is going to save companies so much time. I personally have not used this feature yet but am very excited to try it out.

The second feature is an Idea button. Now I know that may seem simple. But think of it this way, this button was specifically designed to help generate ideas for graphs and other information. There is a short video on it in the email that they sent. But you can click this link to see it too. 😊

And as always Happy Computing. 😊