What is Microsoft excel & why is it so important?... If this question arises in your mind every time then this article is for you.

Microsoft Excel is very important especially now that everything's online. It may be a little difficult to use at the beginning but eventually, you will get used to it.

Using MS Excel has tons of advantages. It is very beneficial for businesses, students, teachers, etc. Basically, anyone who needs to store data and analyze it can and should use Excel.

Now let’s talk about it in a little more detail.

Table Of Contents:

• What Is Microsoft Excel?
• Uses Of Microsoft Excel
• Features Of Microsoft Excel
• Benefits Of Microsoft Excel
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Conclusion

What Is Microsoft Excel?

Microsoft Excel is a part of the Microsoft Office package of productivity software. It is a powerful program for data analysis and documentation.

MS Excel is a spreadsheet program, which contains a number of columns and rows. Each intersection of a column and a row is called a cell. Each cell contains a piece of information.
By using MS Excel you can organize the information in the way you want.

By doing this you can make information easier to find. You can also automatically draw information from changing data.

Uses Of Microsoft Excel

MS Excel is mostly used by businesses because you can create grids of text, numbers, and formulas specifying calculations.
Businesses use it to record expenditures and income, plan budgets, chart data, and much more.
MS Excel can also be programmed to pull in data from external sources such as stock market feeds, to automatically run the data through formulas such as financial models to update the information in real-time.
Excel also contains quite powerful programming capabilities for the people who would like to use them that can be used to develop financial and scientific computation capabilities.

Features Of Microsoft Excel

Although there are many features of MS Excel, we have listed down the 9 most important ones.

1. Add Header and Footer

MS Excel allows you to keep the header and footer in the spreadsheet document.

2. Password Protection

Excel allows the user to protect all their workbooks by using a password.

This can help keep business details safe.

3. Find & Replace Command

MS Excel allows you to find specific data in the sheet and replace it with new data if needed.

4. Data Sorting

MS Excel allows you to sort data either in ascending or descending order.

5. Data Filtering

A filtered range displays only the rows that meet the criteria you specify for a column. MS Excel provides two commands for filtering ranges:

1. AutoFilter - This includes filter by the selection, for simple criteria

2. Advanced Filter - For more complex criteria

6. Built-in Formulae

MS Excel has many built-in formulae for sum, average, minimum, etc. You can use those formulas as per your needs.

7. Automatically Edits The Result

MS Excel automatically edits the result if any changes are made in any of the cells on the sheet.

8. Create Different Charts

MS Excel allows you to create different charts such as bar graphs, pie- charts, line graphs, etc. This can help to analyze and compare data very easily.

9. Formula Auditing

Using formula auditing you can graphically display or trace the relationships between cells and formulas with blue arrows. You can trace the precedents (the cells that provide data to a specific cell) or the dependents (the cells that depend on the value in a specific cell).

You may also like:

• 19 Best Microsoft excel formulas
• 19 Popular Microsoft excel faqs
• Excel basics: The comprehensive guide

Benefits Of Microsoft Excel

1. Best Way To Store Data

Even if you don’t use any of the options or any tool which Excel offers you, it is the best way to store data. This is because when you store your data and share it with someone, they can easily access it.

2. You Can Perform Calculations

An Excel function is a predefined formula that returns a specific result based on the values you specify. But other than that, you can also create your own formulas by combining two or more functions or just by performing calculations using operators.

3. All The Tools For Data Analysis

When you insert your data you need to analyze it too. Ms Excel has the most powerful tools to analyze data.

4. Easy To Data Visualizations

With charts in Excel, you have all the options to create charts and present your data in a visual way. All the major types of charts you need are already there.

5. Many Free Templates

To use one of the most popular things about Excel is that you can create dashboards and templates from the already existing ones.

6. You Can Code To Automate

Microsoft Office has its own coding language which is called VBA (visual basic for applications) and it allows you to write code for almost all the activities that you perform manually in Excel.

7. Store Data With Millions Of Rows

There is no limit to data, but Excel has a limit in terms of rows and columns. That’s why Microsoft came up with Power Pivot where you can store data with millions of rows and then you can perform calculations within Power Pivot.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How to open MS Excel?

Step 1 − Click on the Start button.

Step 2 − Click on the All Programs option from the menu.

Step 3 − Search for Microsoft Office from the sub-menu and click it.

Step 4 − Search for Microsoft Excel 2010 from the submenu and click it.

2. What is a spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet is an electronic document in which data is arranged in the rows and columns of a grid and can be manipulated and used in calculations.

3. How to autofill in Excel?

To autofill in Excel, you should click and hold the left mouse button, and drag the plus sign over the cells you want to fill.

4. What is a filter in Excel?

The filter in excel helps display relevant data by eliminating the irrelevant entries temporarily from the view. The data is filtered as per the given criteria. The purpose of filtering is to focus on the crucial areas of a dataset.

5. What is the use of pivot tables?

A Pivot Table is used to summarise, sort, reorganize, group, count, total or average data stored in a table.

Conclusion

I hope everything is clear to you now. Using Excel is very beneficial.

I hope you start using it soon and find how helpful it is.

If you have doubts or any questions feel free to comment below and we will be there to help you out.

Good luck.