Excel

Kommentare: I've used Excel to create countless spreadsheets during the span of my career. It's feature-rich and there is always some new tip or trick to discover. With the inclusion of Visual Basic for Applications under the hood, I've been able to use Excel for automation long before the current wave of business intelligence applications started to hit the market. In addition to it's obvious functionality as a spreadsheet program, the later versions of it feature pretty robust drawing tools which allow for business graphics creations in situations where you don't always have access to dedicated vector drawing software. In addition to my work at the office, I also make extensive use of Excel at home for keeping track of my family's personal finances.

Vorteile: As a financial analyst with 15 years experience, I've been using Microsoft Excel for quite some time. With all the new business intelligence software out there, some may be of the opinion that Excel is becoming obsolete. I would argue that is still has it's place in a today's analyst's toolbox. In our office we have utilized some of the fancier tools like Alteryx or Tableau to wrangle/present data but Excel still remains a major part of our regular processes. Excel offers tremendous flexibility in summarizing, analyzing and presenting data for whatever the deliverable calls for. It also acts as an excellent scratch pad for ad-hoc analysis via filters or pivot tables. What I like most about Excel is the fact that you can directly manipulate your data in an intuitive manner without the need for knowledge of programming or scripting languages. Bottom line, if you are an analyst, spreadsheets will always be part of your world and Excel is the industry standard.

Nachteile: It's honestly difficult to think of anything that I don't like about Excel as it has served me well for more than a decade and a half in my professional life. I suppose like any other software it can at times be slow to respond when your files get to large. Probably the thing I like least about it is the tendency to get corrupted when too many formatting options are used in a single workbook and/or the tendency to not always allow you to make a clean break when you want to remove a link to another file that another user has created. Other than that, it's pretty solid.

Kommentare: Overall, Excel has and seemingly always will be a classic staple of the professional work life. For analysts, it's a must-have product but even for the average professional, Excel can bring a level of organization in data management that other platforms simply do not provide. It's hard to state if Excel is worth the money... at this point Excel dominates the market and there's very little in terms of competition (aside from Google Sheets, I can't even think of another tool). I couldn't function properly without Excel but here's hoping that another competitor enters the fray in what is essentially a monopoly.

Vorteile: Excel is THE tool for analysts and engineers. While Google Sheets acts as a close competitor, for those of us who need the sophisticated capabilities that Excel provides, there really is no substitute. The ability to automate processes through advanced formulas and macros makes Excel the only solution for those seeking to manage and clean data. Excel has dominated the market for decades and you can rest assured knowing that everyone knows of Excel.

Nachteile: Mass adoption is a double-edged sword. Despite Excel offering a lot of value to the user, there's very little in terms of substitutes to even consider. If you coworkers, colleagues and clients use Excel, you need it as well if you hope to send them spreadsheets. The Microsoft Suite suffers from a range of technical bugs that seems to get resolved only sporadically. Every time a new version of Excel is released (usually once every few years), some aspect of the user experience ends up changing. To those of us who have ingrained habits in terms of where to find specific buttons or memorizing certain shortcuts, the changes can be frustrating.