MS Excel, developed and marketed by Microsoft as you know, is a part of Microsoft Office suite, which features performing various mathematical calculations, graphical tools, pivot tables, and offers support for ‘Visual Basic for Applications’ – the programming language. MS Excel spreadsheets are widely used for managing everyday data in corporate, and therefore this application is available for both Windows and Mac based computers. Besides, such a vast usage enforces developers at Microsoft keep working on this application to make it more and more reliable and efficient for their usage. Consequently, MS Excel, today, is available in multiple versions (Excel 2013, 2010, 2007, 2007, and some earlier versions).

A thorough look at MS Excel 2013

When you start using a new application, you do not know much about its features and practical usage to carry out the intended task. Exactly; The same situation came across when Microsoft publicized its Excel 2013 application as a part of Microsoft Office 2013 suite. In fact, I must say the users were quite unable to work in Excel 2013 spreadsheets and were getting data mishmash every time after running a query. Let us take a scenario for clarification:

Suppose you run a query in a database and it returned with a data mishmash that is pretty hard to understand. To be a bit clearer, suppose there are hundreds of rows and only three columns – Names, email IDs, and mobile numbers. In an ideal way, you first fill all three columns of the first row, and then begin with the second row and so on. This also makes filling data in other rows a bit easier for you. Well, managing data stored in hundreds of rows and their corresponding columns became a bit messy, which made the developers write hundreds of macros to solve the issue. Let us proceed further to know more.

Chat Handling

Chart handling is Excel was made much easier with in Excel 2007 and 2010 versions, which later in 2013 version has become a star. This feature in Excel 2013 enables you make professional-like charts, which indeed have never been feasible in any version of Excel nor any of the apps marketed by its business rivals. However, making such effective charts requires you walk through some hard rock challenges. In other words, you might see creating charts easy, but you come across real difficulties when you put the steps into practice.

Excel 2013 features so many sample charts that you can choose as well as can create new ones as per your requirements. However, choosing one amongst the available ones eases your work by a bit.

Making Amendments

You might find highlighting charts’ features everywhere or may call it obsession; however, it is quite easy to make amendments in charts in Excel 2013, once they are created. Charts Filters is another significant feature in Excel 2013, which also works in a similar way and allows you include/exclude data from a column in the chart. For instance, in case you get an idea about making some alterations in the data entered one or more columns, and you want to display it in a different way, you can use Chart Filters and do exactly what your idea is about.

Faster Analysis

Though the feature Conditional Formatting was already added to Excel 2007 version (and was available in Excel 2010), the same feature you will also find in Excel 2013, which allows you apply different formatting on different data to make them look different and give a specific meaning. For instance, while creating sales order report, you can apply different color schemes to different columns in single row that represents the sum of the data entered below it consecutively. A different color scheme can also be chosen to highlight the profits earned by each employee handling a separate area.

In comparison to Excel 2010, the newer version (i.e. Excel 2013) has not got many enhancements in the Conditional Formatting feature. However, it allows you apply them to different columns in a way easier than it was in Excel 2010.

Make Sense of Data

Amongst all the columns added to a sales report, suppose of a toyshop chain, the pivot table is the one that gives the results as required. In other words, it is not only easy to access the required record from a pivot table, but it is worthwhile as well because ultimately you need the resultant data. In fact, the significance of the pivot table is large in number, which also covers the reduced evaluation time.

In such a record, it makes supervising the data of each employee working in the sales department quite easier, which enables you to keep a watch on the performance of each employee individually.

Observing Small Things

In Excel 2013, working with multiple excel sheets simultaneously is made a bit easier like never before. In other words, you can work in multiple excel sheets simultaneously, as Excel 2013 opens multiple files in different windows. Therefore, you can work in two sheets by keeping one at the left, while the other at the right.

You certainly will love this feature added to Excel 2013; however, it becomes much irritating to work in a sheet keeping the other at the right having an animation. Likewise, you might be able to keep multiple Excel files simultaneously, but the only one who can work in the opened sheets is you. In other words, opening multiple sheets simultaneously is worthless, but it would be amazing if two multiple persons were able to work in those sheets.