The first Excel course that I have ever taken was over three decades ago when I was stationed in Brunssum City, the Netherlands. This was at a time when it was not standard practice to have a computer on one’s desk, so I just took the course to give me familiarity of the software package, but had no real use for it until I left the military and entered the world of business, where it was customary for every desk to have a workstation. That course, which covered a very basic version of Excel, held me in good stead because I had the ability to carry out the operations that I needed to accomplish at work. In the beginning one could buy a book on how to use Excel and refer to it to complete tasks, but eventually, as the internet took more and more precedence in our daily lives, I only needed to Google what I needed to do in Excel and, after having looked at enough websites, I would find the answer to the question that I was seeking. Googling a question has been superseded however by the invention of large language models, which will not only answer a question but will actually create a spreadsheet if asked.
In a recent blog post I have written I discussed the basics of how to use the most recent version of Excel and that post can be found here…
