Standard office tool for spreadsheets that continues to deliver
Updated November 30, 2021
Standard office tool for spreadsheets that continues to deliver

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Excel
Excel is used in every aspect of the business. In the R&D group, we use Excel daily to analyze data and look for trends to drive experimental design & decision making. Graphical elements of Excel are used to communicate the same data to more senior managers. In the PMO, Excel and Pivot tables are used for resource management, to determine when resources are available or insufficient. Excel is used in the budget generation process, where more advanced functions are used to collate expense projections across cost accounts.
- Pivot Tables/Charts & Slicer
- Sparklines
- Charts - new types are added occasionally
- Easy to open, navigate and start building spreadsheet
- Familiarity as part of Microsoft Office - everyone knows it
- Reviews. Other than adding Notes or Comments, you cannot see what someone changed (like Word) unless you manually "redline" the cells
- Training - there are many features to Excel that most people are not aware of
- As an Office tool, Excel removes any inefficiencies from tool indoctrination. It is simple and fast to share Excel files between team members and update simultaneously if incorporated within Teams or SharePoint
- Because of the familiarity of Excel, users are likely using only 20% of its functionality, which means a high potential (or lost opportunity) for increased productivity and efficiency.
- The weak implementation of reviews has resulted in significant time loss while users manually generate 'redlines' to Excel files for reviews using font formatting.
Excel will always be selected because it's part of the Office Suite. We started to use Smartsheet, but the onboarding and training process took too long when compounded with licensing setup & costs. Apple Numbers works well, but without the maturity of Excel. Since Apple products are not prevalently used in business applications, Excel wins.
Do you think Microsoft Excel delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Microsoft Excel's feature set?
Yes
Did Microsoft Excel live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Microsoft Excel go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Microsoft Excel again?
Yes
Using Microsoft Excel
150 - All aspects of company: Research and Development; Marketing & Product Management; Finance; IT; Operations; Quality; Sales; Field Service & Customer Support
- IT department (4 people) supports all office tools, including Excel. There isn't someone dedicated to supporting Excel.
- To support installation and upgrades, etc., general IT skills for installing programs is needed. To support Excel tool use, person needs to be an advanced user of Excel. Many in IT do not have this skillset.
- Common tool - everyone has it installed
- Familiar tool - Everyone has used it before
- It's part of MS Office suite
- We've used Excel for resource management - using simple color coding to compare resource needs vs capacity.
- Use Excel to create simple Gantt charts for simple projects
- Scenario analysis
- Connect Excel to dynamic dashboards to skip static cut/paste