Do you use MS Excel? If not, maybe you should. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, but don’t know what it does or how to use it. So, this article is here to help you out. It has a list of the 13 best Features and Uses of MS Excel, making it one of the most influential and useful apps.
What is MS Excel
MS Excel is a spreadsheet program that helps you organize and manipulate wide data arrays. It’s one of the most popular applications, with millions of users across the world.
You can use it to track budgets, manage finances, store information, and make presentations. It can even help you create your own spreadsheets, charts, and graphs. Like, the advantages of ms excel it has advanced characteristics.
Uses of MS Excel
Microsoft Excel makes it easy to produce financial reports, manage information in large databases, track budgets and expenses, keep track of income and expenses, manage invoices and bills, and analyze data. Let’s look at some other uses of Microsoft excel.
1. Make a financial report or budget
A financial report is nothing but a list of your income and expenses. Make it once in a while, or perhaps every month, to manage all your spending.
2. Track your bills and payments
Organize your bills and payments using Excel. It can also help you find out which ones are overdue and when they are due.
3. Keep A Personal Agenda
Alternatively, you can also keep your schedule, and plans organized. You can make a monthly calendar or agenda that shows you what you’re doing each day.
4. Create graphs and charts
You can create graphs and charts using Microsoft Excel. You can display the data in a diagram or chart that’s easy to read.
5. Track your income and expenses
You can use Excel to track your income and expenses. You can have a daily or weekly report that shows you where your money goes.
6. Organize information
Make a list of all your contacts, sort them out and then export them to your cell phone. You can also make lists of phone numbers or important names and numbers and sort them alphabetically.
7. Send out updates and announcements
You can send out email notifications to announce new products, new customers, updates on your site, or any other relevant information. You can also send updates to your clients or suppliers ahead of time.
8. Keep track of your expenses
You can use excel to track all your expenses, such as groceries, clothing, gas, medicines, or any other expense. You can even add photos and make a quick summary of it.
9. Create a calendar
You can make a calendar, diary, or schedule to help keep you organized. You can track important events that are coming up, such as birthdays and anniversaries.
10. Build a website
You can make a website using Microsoft Excel. There are special templates available for this purpose, but you can also make your own.
11. Analyze the data
Using Excel to analyze data is one of its best-known uses. You can use Excel to graph data, analyze it and then generate charts and graphs.
Features of MS Excel
A user interface (UI) is the layout of graphics, text, and icons on a computer screen. MS Excel has a user interface that’s easy to understand and use. The functions in MS Excel are also very intuitive to use.
Let’s explore some of the most important features or characteristics of MS Excel. These are the most popular functions and commands that you’ll learn while using them.
1. Saving files
You can save your work as a file, or even save the whole project. You can also create and drop different worksheets within the same project file. We can save files through the shortcut key CTRL+S, or by using ICON on the very left side of windows.
2. Insert Pivot Table
A pivot table is a simple tool that will store and display data into one table feature. You can easily find the data you are looking for and put it on the table.
In addition, you can also make charts to show trends. On the left side, you can see the pivot table in the Inset menus of Microsoft excel. How to use a pivot table? Learn here.
3. Use Formula and Functions
A formula bar is a place where we can write formulas and see their results. We can also write and edit functions in the formula bar.
Some main functions of Microsoft excel are SUM, SUMIF, COUNT, COUNTIF, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, AVERAGE, etc. Using the Formula bar you can use these formulas and functions as well.
4. Format cells
We can use different formats to organize, store and manipulate the data in Excel. Some of these are borders, cell shading, number pads, etc.
5. Conditional Formats
Conditional Formats are a tool to format cells according to certain conditions. We can use it to highlight the data that meets a certain condition. ICON on the right-hand side of the window is for conditional formats.
6. Filter Data
In addition, we can filter our data and make the report more focused. Filters are a very important feature that helps you choose the relevant data from your database. In the Home Menu, you can find it on the very right side.
How to filter data in Microsoft Excel? To filter data in excel, we can use two different ways.
The first way is by using the filter button on the ribbon (be sure to have selected a cell). The second way is by using the filter icon on the top of your screen.
7. Slicer
Slicers are a new feature in Microsoft Excel’s more recent editions. They are used to displaying and organize data into a grid-like format.
They are very useful for showing multiple levels of data by filtering or sorting it. We can use them to create lists, charts, graphs, etc. You can access Slicer in the Inset Menu of Microsoft excel.
8. Merging Cells
Merging cells is an important feature of Excel. We can use them to combine over one cell into a single cell. This feature always comes in handy when you want to write a title or copy some text across the columns.
9. Create a Dashboard
We can also create a dashboard using Excel. A dashboard is an important feature that helps us track our important metrics. We can use it to display different metrics and information on one page. It is also a useful tool for project management and accountability purposes.
10. Freeze Panes
We can also use the freeze pane feature to display a certain group of columns and rows. We can see the data for all other cells in a separate pane.
It is used to help us distinguish between the different data, making it easier for us to read and compare the information. We can access it in the view menu.
11. Merge
You can also use the merge feature to combine multiple values into one cell. We can merge two or more numbers, text, and dates in a single cell.
12. Sort
In addition, we can also use sorting to make our data more organized. Some of these sorting features include descending and ascending order, as well as a custom order.
13. Table functions
Another great feature of MS Excel is the table function. This can help us organize our data. Some of the best table functions are INDEX, INDIRECT, and MATCH.
Conclusion
We conclude that Microsoft Excel is indeed a powerful tool. It helps you organize and store your data in a better way, making it easier to access, update and retrieve. It also helps you to analyze the data and make it more useful.
Even with thousands of functions and features, you can use MS Excel effectively to help boost your productivity and save time.
We hope you will find this tutorial useful and that it will help you get more out of MS Excel. There are many ways to use this powerful software. We encourage you to be creative and come up with your own uses for it.