43 Folders

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Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Open Thread: How are you using Excel?

Yesterday, I mentioned I'd been talking with someone who's looking at interesting things people are doing with Microsoft Excel. I talked to her again yesterday, and with her official okey-dokey, I'll virtually introduce Tralee Pearce (*waves*), a reporter from Toronto's Globe & Mail whom you might remember from a very swell article about the Hipster PDA.

So, by request -- and to help Tralee with fleshing out her fun-sounding article -- I hope you all will jump in here: What kind of cool, novel, and non-obvious stuff are you doing with Excel? What's the wildest, most obsessive, most nerdy thing you ever saw someone do with our favorite spreadsheet program?

James Ledoux's picture

EXCEL makes and excellent wedding...

EXCEL makes and excellent wedding planner!

My wife and I recently used it to track Wedding To-Dos, invitations lists, budget (plan vs actual), RSVPs, and general notetaking.

Using the Conditional Formatting option is a nice way to have items show up with colors baed on the cell entry eg. Complete in the Status column turns Green.

 
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