I got a taste of Microsoft Excel before I deployed. My boss loves spreadsheets. Especially colorful ones. Previously, I took a class through Embry-Riddle on the Microsoft Office Suite of products. That was a while ago. Guess I managed to dump all that knowledge into the 'not going to ever need that' portion of my brain.
Well, that came around to bite me in the ass.
I use so much Excel these days that its ridiculous. I've also never used the 'Help' feature in a program so much. Man, is that feature good to have.
I manage a total of 12 teams. So that's 12 spreadsheets I have to look at daily to track and analyze a variety of data and see how we can reallocate personnel and other assets based on how much work they do, have, or don't have.
But I'm lazy. It's a pain to open all those spreadsheets, nested inside of our database of files. Click here, log in, open this, wait, wait, wait, finally loads, check. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...
Laziness brings about inventiveness and creativity. I'm a firm believer in that. So I got ambitious, and creative.
After a lot of time searching the Help feature, and even more time experimenting, I finally achieved my goal. One single spreadsheet, with a column for every single team, for every single day, linked to pull the data DIRECTLY from the online the spreadsheets. Sure makes life a lot easier for me, and anyone else that wants to quickly view all the data from the week.
Unfortunately, I didn't do ALL the formulas to add the cells right. I didn't do the formulas originally, but I've found some errors (brought to my attention from others).
So guess what I'll be doing tomorrow? You got it, combing through every cell, making sure the formulas are correct. Believe me when I say that some of them are super long.
Looks like another long day as desk jockey.
I used to think that I was pretty good at excel but we have some financial analysts at work that can make those sheets do anything except dance. Sounds like you are on the right track combining everything. Checking those really long formulas is really difficult.
ReplyDeleteYou Da Man!! I'm the laziest guy in the world. When I want to know something about Excel I call my built in expert "Ellen!!" and ask her. Good luck with those formulas, i hate them and know what you will be going through.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of the those spreadsheet lovers. You can do anything with a spreadsheet. Excel is a great skill to have, you'll find it very handy.
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