Help me turn my Excel crush into a meaningful relationship.

November 21, 2008 10:16 AM

Help me turn my Excel crush into a meaningful relationship.

I have been working at the same office job for 10 years. I kind of fell bassackwards into it as I started there as a temp worker setting up client presentations. They liked me, hired my on full time and I have been yanked up the corporate ladder to my current situation with more responsibility and interaction with clients. Which I do not like at all. I do not have any drive or passion for the field I'm in (advertising). But everyone seems to like me and say I'm doing a great job. I feel that I am doing disservice to the company, my clients and myself.

The only time I am happy at work is when I am in Excel.

I am entirely self-taught in Excel and while my co-workers are consistently wowed by what I can do with it, I know I am just scratching the surface and still quite the newb. I have very minimal experience with VBA and have never been exposed to Access or other database management tools. I have made up excuses to create pivot tables. And then get frustrated because no one else around me can work with them. I will waste time fixing up other people's spreadsheets and then want to bang my head on my desk when I go back in to see them screwed up again.

I am itching to find a new job and I think I would greatly enjoy something centred around Excel (or similar) and that would have minimal interaction with people (meetings, client relations, presentations, phone calls, etc.).

While I enjoy playing with numbers (I used to be a math/physics major before my life got a bit sidetracked), I really don't care about what they mean - just what I can do with them and rearranging them in a pleasing manner.

1) Where should I start to improve my Excel and related skills (e.g. resources for self-teaching or courses)?

2) What other programs should I also look into?

3) What type of job should I be looking for?

posted by mephisjo to computers & internet (16 comments total)

2) What other programs should I also look into?

GIS software dovetails nicely with the data produced in Excel, is very useful in many industries (govt., marketing, science, etc.).
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 10:30 AM on November 21, 2008

Financial analysis and similar in Wall Street-type firms.
posted by salvia at 10:33 AM on November 21, 2008

3) Data Manager. Common position in research/academic settings.
posted by sulaine at 10:36 AM on November 21, 2008

In our web startup, the one guy who I'd say "lives in Excel" is our marketing analyst.
posted by mendel at 10:45 AM on November 21, 2008

#3) Consider accounting or financial analysis. (I'm in accounting, and I love Excel too, especially pivot tables).
posted by velvet winter at 10:58 AM on November 21, 2008

Oh, and as for Excel self-teaching resources, my favorite is the Excel 2007 Bible by John Walkenbach.
posted by velvet winter at 11:01 AM on November 21, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Dude, read up on SQL. It'll make you drool. It's like Excel, but... freeform. You can still calculate stuff -- but you can also pick out sets of things that match predicates, and traverse graphs of relations

Here, look at how I can totally misuse SQL as a constraint solver. Totally the wrong tool for the job, but so much fun.
posted by orthogonality at 11:02 AM on November 21, 2008

If you learn SQL and Access, you get to make structures that the users CAN'T screw around with and break! And pivot tables will seem like child's toys once you start learning SQL—it sounds to me like you'd find it really fun.

Database diehards will point their fingers at Access and laugh but it will be a good sandbox to learn in, especially since it comes with Office and interoperates with Excel pretty nicely.
posted by bcwinters at 11:28 AM on November 21, 2008

I currently work in the cost accounting department of my company and also practically live in Excel. Just my two cents:

The first thing you should do is really acquire some extensive knowledge of VBA. While it certainly is not the best programming language out there, you can still do quite amazing things and save yourself a bunch of time by facilitating / automating recurring stupefying tasks. If you have the time, you should also get a grasp on general programming principles (I highly recommend the free Think Python ebook). Apart from that it would also be wise to study your company's Business Intelligence solution. Here in Germany we use the SAP Business Information Warehouse. It comes with an app called SAP BusinessExplorer Analyser which is embedded into Excel and allows the user to design pretty advanced queries using multi dimnesional data strcutures called InfoCubes. Used in conjunction with Excel's VBA one can download relevant data from the DataWarehouse Server and integrate that for example into a self-written dashboard. As you can see, the possibilities are endless, even with the simple means of Excel. However, apart from knowledge of VBA a sound understaning of data structures and database design / queries (SQL) in general is also necessary.
Oh, and pivot tables are elementary. Learn to use them as soon as possible. They are not that difficult at all.
And how about something like business data processing specialist in terms of a job description?
posted by pu9iad at 12:23 PM on November 21, 2008

I understand your joys. I'm in a new job that requires using Excel a bunch and I'm having tremendous fun learning its ins and outs. Pivot tables are amazing! I don't really know the Excel resource landscape yet, so I can't speak to your first question, but here are my thoughts for your others:

(2)
Learn a scripting language! You like playing with things in Excel, right? Well if you can write a quick script to process huge amounts of text and spit it out in comma separated value (CSV) form, then the sky's the limit as to what you can get IN to Excel in the first place! As an example from my work, I had to get all these guys into an Excel sheet. So I copied them into a text file, wrote a small (5 lines of code) perl script, and set the script loose on it. The data all popped out in CSV form and I was able to import it right into Excel!

Another time, I had two Excel worksheets with complementary data I wanted to combine, but it wasn't really in a format that would make it easy. So I saved each worksheet as a CSV text file. I wrote a quick script to take in each text file and join them in the way I had in mind, and output a new text file, which I then imported into Excel.

I recommend a language like perl or ruby, both of which can let you start powerfully manipulating text pretty easily. I really do think scripting languages like these hit the sweetspot for you in terms of learning curve, future potential, immediate applicability, and downright fun. I'm so sure you'll like it I'd be thrilled to walk you through the process of finding interesting data on the web, writing your first script to massage it into a form you like, and importing it into Excel! Just send me a MeFi mail.

(3)
Well, I just started a job in a finance firm, and I can tell you whenever I walk by the analysts and their associates they always seem to have Excel open. So something money related is an obvious choice.

Another alternative is to start a blog! Specifically: find data about interesting things (data is everywhere on the web, although not always as an .xls), slice and dice it with a script that you're going to learn to write to get it in Excel, play with it in Excel until you find a compelling story, and then tell that story with a big, beautiful chart. Blogs are a dime a dozen on the internet and seem to rehash the same things, but you can stand out by creating your own novel content in this way, I'm sure.
posted by losvedir at 1:52 PM on November 21, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm sure you've met Mr. Excel...
posted by ginagina at 1:57 PM on November 21, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Not sure if this addresses your first point, but assuming that you'd accept
reading a book: "Excel Basics to Blackbelt", (An Accelerated Guide to Decision Support Designs) by Elliot Bendoly seems like a perfect fit for your needs...
posted by theKik at 1:59 PM on November 21, 2008

Polling companies are big into this. You may want to look into SPSS as well, and as orthogonality said, SQL. I personally found it way easier to do crosstab/pivot tables via SQL. You might dig it.
posted by ignignokt at 2:16 PM on November 21, 2008

I am a fellow data geek, and I agree with those who suggest SQL, Access, SPSS, and GIS.
posted by desjardins at 2:46 PM on November 21, 2008

I will waste time fixing up other people's spreadsheets and then want to bang my head on my desk when I go back in to see them screwed up again

Look in the help under "lock cells".
posted by flabdablet at 5:24 PM on November 21, 2008

(3) There are analyst positions (for example, in healthcare administration) where people work almost exclusively in Excel. These type of positions involve pulling numbers in different ways in order to answer a variety of inquiries from outside companies.

Pulling number is not as straightforward as it sounds when it comes to something as complex as healthcare.
posted by mintchip at 3:24 PM on November 23, 2008