Wanted: How YOU use Excel!

[xld]

!

How you use Excel

• Primary: playing battleships

LOL! At last, an honest man!

 

[xld]

I'm the applications specialist in a bank. One of the basic things I've used to show the power of Excel is amortization tables. Another project (which could apply to any industry) was taking a pile of raw data and massaging it to provide a profit/loss comparison report for each of our branches.

Of course, a Sudoku solver would probably get people to sit up and notice.

http://www.andypope.info/fun/sudoku.htm

 

[jasonraedy]

I work in manufacturing for a very large company making auto parts. I am considered the excel guru here and use excel extensively to download large amounts of data from either shared drives in pdf format or oracle or sharepoint databases (among others) and make easy to use summaries that allow the user to drill down from top level summaries to mid level summaries and finally to the data. I also use many graphing macros for summary charts with key data extracted from the fields. I made literally hundreds of programs and the value of these is priceless.

 

[CMIIandExcel]

Your industry

• Construction(Rail & Major Civil Engineering)

Just a general description of where within the industry

• Currently East London Line Project, £500 Million project to referbish and extend a railway.

How you use Excel

• Automation of Asset data capture from predfined hiearchy.
• Reporting of Documents current and issued, to the client and site.
  
• As a vessel for transfering data into a Configuration Management Database.
• Daily and weekly work allocation and tracking.
• Staff performance tracking for personal developmnent.
• Validation and verification of data recived.
• Communicating with engineers who seem only to understand badly writen word documents, and badly designed (on thier part) spreadsheets

Ok so i am a bit bitter with the last point!

regards Mike

 

[Excelestial]

I use excel to gauge and forecast national sales of our commercial fiber products. I've used it extensively in the Dept. of Defense for covert operations I've worked; in a University for research projects; in small private businesses to file state-mandated cost reports, track activity, expenditures, and clients. I currently design analysis models by automating massive, dynamic and robust spreadsheets that make my work "audience" give serious contemplation that I am the borderline-mad type of "genius" LOL. Which isn't a bad title when your boss gives you space to accomodate the idiosynchrasies that come with the it. LOL

And so even if you don't splice DNA at the job, or are the administrator of the Dept that builds Nuclear warheads on stealth missiles, being on top of the Excel game gets you hailed as the company's Excel guru. The application has helped make me quite indispensible as my job was spared during two rounds of layoffs amid the recession...and I was the "new kid" on the block in a job that was created for me. The ONLY "new kid" spared, no less. Those that were going out the door, asked if they could keep contact to have readily available access to a valuable resource.

That being siad, if I received notification of a seminar that would enhance my skills, I would be attracted to any existing opportunity of making myself highly marketable and retention preferrable. Job security is the new American Dream.

 

[ge0rge]

I use excel for automating tasks related to Quality Control and Engineering (prestress members). I have lately tied excel to a concrete batching system to perform data analysis for tolerance tracking.

 

[scottylad2]

Brain Training! I use Excel for various things, i used to deal with staff rotas and timesheets so being able to calculate all the hours people worked and keep track of annual leave was easy via Excel.

Don't have to do that now, but i do still monitor some of the Rotas and spreadsheets i've made and am continually getting "tweaks" for them from this site.

Also since being on this site it's been great looking at the posts people put on here and trying to solve them. I work some weird shifts so being in the house for quite a long time on my own, i can either hoover, do housework or do some "brain training" by sitting looking at this site.......I could even work out the probability of what i'm most likely to do now lol!

 

[T. Valko]

I use excel for automating tasks related to Quality Control and Engineering (prestress members). I have lately tied excel to a concrete batching system to perform data analysis for tolerance tracking.

I used to work at a cement manufacturing plant. 21 yrs then was down-sized (along with everyone else!).

12 of those years as a quality control lab analyst. We used Excel extensively for various tasks. Mix designs (raw material what-if-analysis), xray fluorescence integration and calibration (mind boggling stuff!), databse, agency reporting, etc, etc.

I then moved on to be a process supervisor where they (we) rarely used Excel until I got involved! Employee scheduling, production forecasting, inventory analysis, etc., etc.

Here's something that is really funny. Borland Turbo C (a popular C compiler in the mid 80's) used to ship with sample source code for a spreadsheet progam. My first experience with a spreadsheet was with this compiled code! We actually used this as a database for a while!

 

[Sandeep Warrier]

I started using Excel about less than 3 years back. Mainly started learning tricks to reduce my workload and was then addicted to Excel

Industry:
Due Diligence, KYC, AML

Where within the industry:
Support to Due Diligence research team

Excel usage:
Tracking the amount of work done by my team. Preparing a few MIS reports and have just progressed to making small tools in Excel that help automate a few tasks.

One of the main points i've come across is ignorance of Excel functions/Excel in general among many people.

For example, many people I know are 100% certain that the only use of VLOOKUP is to compare 2 columns of data to identify missing elements
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[ge0rge]

I used to work at a cement manufacturing plant. 21 yrs then was down-sized (along with everyone else!).

12 of those years as a quality control lab analyst. We used Excel extensively for various tasks. Mix designs (raw material what-if-analysis), xray fluorescence integration and calibration (mind boggling stuff!), databse, agency reporting, etc, etc.

I then moved on to be a process supervisor where they (we) rarely used Excel until I got involved! Employee scheduling, production forecasting, inventory analysis, etc., etc.

Here's something that is really funny. Borland Turbo C (a popular C compiler in the mid 80's) used to ship with sample source code for a spreadsheet progam. My first experience with a spreadsheet was with this compiled code! We actually used this as a database for a while!

I automated some tasks related to pre-stressed strand calculations and some believe I made others "dumb" in doing so. Why work harder instead of smarter. I won't deny that I had a great deal of help here in accomplishing alot of tasks but at the same time I did some projects on my own since coming here that i otherwise would have never been able to do.

I am currently working on a complete Quality Control / Concrete Mix Design excel project at home, untied from work, that I can use for my own personal use. I am always looking for any excel related material for ideas as well.