Sunday, February 13, 2011

Excel Project

This excel project was very fun and interesting for me.  I was able to use all the different techniques we learned from the lectures and actually put them to work.  At my current job I used an excel spreadsheet to display the staffing for the current shift at the unit I work on in the hospital.  What I use excel for at my job does not even scratch the surface of the capabilities that the excel program has to offer.

In the first half of the project while working with the raw data I was able to put a lot of the skills I learned from the lectures to use.  The one I found most useful was the control plus arrow keys to navigate the worksheet.  My current use of excel tops out at about 40-50 rows.  In the raw data we had over 500, so when it came to copying formulas to an entire column of 500 rows the shift/control/arrow keys were a must.  I also felt that the "IF" formula was one of the coolest as far as having total customization of the data.

In the second half of the project we worked with pivot tables.  Now I have never heard, seen or worked with a pivot table ever so this was all new to me.  I've been blessed enough with the opportunity to own a Macbook Pro, but unfortunately what we saw in the lectures didn't turn out to be similar in the Mac version of excel.  I feel that I had a decent grasp of the pivot table so hopefully my work will solidify that.  Overall I think the project did a great job of taking the new skills we learned and putting them to use.


No comments:

Post a Comment