Hi. This isn’t a big deal, really, but it does bug me a bit. While at work and for grad school I pretty much avoid Excel as much as possible…I simply don’t like it. It’s not like I crunch numbers all day, but I’d much rather use my calculator for all of my calculations. Even in my financial management class, I used my calculator to manually find solutions to some pretty drawn out problems instead of using Excel (which would save quite a bit of time). Some of my classmates were blown away that I can’t stand Excel…this was surprising to me. Again, this isn’t a big deal at all but I’m wondering if I’m the only one who hates using Excel?
Excel is one of the world’s wonders.
You would rather punch in a 10 year DCF on your calculator?
No I don’t aviod excel and it’s a great tool…but uhhhh, more importantly…did you get the girl?
i live on excel at work and when i was in grad school.
Ha! We had to do some DCFs but never to 10 years 
I used my financial calculator for this and it went well. Call me old fashioned I guess. I have a feeling I’m in the minority on this topic
No!
I learned on the calculator in the 80’s (HP 12C, another wonder of the world) but ever since the first spreadsheet programs arrived, like Lotus 123, Visicalc and Quattro, the calculator has been relegated to an occasional simple calculation.
Why do you avoid Excel?
Do you also avoid Word and use Notepad?
Fred.
When I was in school we couldn’t even use a calculator :(.
Nope. I practically live on Excel.
Although, given the choice, I’d migrate to Open Office Calc.
Since I don’t really have that choice, I’m stuck with Office.
But if you abstract out the brand wars, you can pry my spreadsheet program from my cold, dead hands…
Whether you like it or not, IMHO you’d better get comfortable with it. It’s the standard in the business world and that isn’t likely to change.
Thank God I don’t have to deal with it. I’ve also switched to OpenOffice. I don’t do anything heavy duty so I don’t know where it falls short of Excel but, really, so far, so good.
i do not use the program, it freaks me out–it’s confusing, but i don’t work with numbers (thank God, it would be a failure).
If I avoided excel I wouldn’t be able to do my job. I think its fine. Sure there are limitations, but they just require some creative thinking to work around.
I’ve been using SPSS more for my stuff and I tend to like it.
Everyone, thanks for your comments. I’m glad that I don’t work with numbers all that much. Someday, however, I may have to get comfortable using spreadsheets. I’m confident that I can learn very well, I just don’t feel like doing it. Maybe I’m lazy? Thanks again.
Eh, please don’t think I like it. Its a means to an end as far as I’m concerned with research. Some of my colleagues take great pleasure in working with the numbers. All the more power to them.
I never really thought of excel as a calculator replacement but it sure beats a calculator for organizing and manipulating large amounts of source data not to mention the simple charting capabilities. If you are really serious about data analysis you should check out matlab though.