Figures and charts, the things which warm the hearts of accountants and managers, these are the things in which Excel excels.

Excel is Microsoft’s spreadsheet, and users of other spreadsheets like Lotus 123 may well disagree that Excel is good.

To expand on my last blog entry, which had definitions of what spreadsheets and databases are and what they do, I’ll concentrate on spreadsheets.

Currently the top-selling commercial spreadsheet is Microsoft Excel. There are other spreadsheets available, like the aforementioned Lotus, or Calc, which is the spreadsheet program in the free OpenOffice.org office suite.

Although some of my first experience with computers revolved around databases, the first time I saw a spreadsheet I was really impressed at what it could do. Spreadsheets are easy to set up. It doesn’t take much to have a spreadsheet up and running to track or calculate small amounts of data. Often I use a spreadsheet just for tabular information which is going to be formatted and printed.

I’ve been trying to think of some rules of thumb as to when you should use a spreadsheet instead of a database. While researching this question I came across a very interesting article online called “Spreadsheet Addiction“, in which it is claimed that the overuse of spreadsheets is a major problem. It makes for interesting reading…

Posted on July 24th, 2008 by mervyn