Monday, February 22, 2010

Microsoft Excel: Advantages and Disadvantages

There are several advantages and disadvantages,in my opinion, when using Microsoft excel. Out of experience I can say that the top five disadvantages for my case are that for one, sometimes you find yourself completely confused. It is not something that you can use easily, and you need to have experience and prior knowledge before using excel, otherwise you find yourself confused. The second disadvantage of Microsoft excel is when it comes to school, many professors such as in IT labs, require excel 2007. Well, it's 2010, and many of us who, for example me, have excel 2008 or later and when doing case studies that require the use of excel, the formatting on excel is much different. The third disadvantage is that because there are so many different equations that excel knows, it is easy to insert an incorrect equation, thus inserting completely erroneous information onto the spreadsheet. The fourth disadvantage, and this is probably just in my case, is that although excel is known for being very reliable, I find myself double-checking my information (especially numbers), which is very time consuming. The fifth and final disadvantage I believe is that, while it is an excellent program, there are an overwhelming amount of people who don't know how to use excel and could benefit from it tremendously. Those who aren't familiar with excel use other time consuming ways to jot down tedious information including numbers and other data. At the same time, for those who ARE familiar with excel, there are an infinite amount of advantages. Since I am attempting to make this post as short as possible and not so verbose, I will list the top five advantages of using Microsoft excel.

  • Using the spread sheet on excel allows one to insert a vast amount of data, including numbers via equations in a simplified, effective, and fast way.
  • It allows you to insert data not only numerically on a spreadsheet, but also in an easy-read and understandable manner by allowing you to insert charts and graphs.
  • For students, it's an effective program that can be used to complete assignments such as for many labs, and in my case where I am a biology major, I use excel many times to insert data from lab experiments.
  • For students and professors in universities, it allows professors to put grades on a spreadsheet by, for example, g numbers, which then allows students to access the spreadsheet and view their grades on exams, quizzes, so on and so fourth.
  • It allows you to easily let others view a vast amount of data by letting you send it via email or print it out just as it appears on the computer.