# Off Topic > The Water Cooler >  >  Ice Breaker - My First Excel Experience

## NBVC

Well, I thought it would be only fitting to have an ice breaker to start off this new forum...and what better ice breaker than to talk about your first experience using Excel.

Well, my first experience started late in University.... I was one of those people that refused to let technology win me over.  I didn't want to buy a computer and insisted on hand writing all my assignments... I lost points in some assignments because of it, but I was stubborn about it.

Then, came my thesis year... and my thesis professor wasn't going to let me get away with a hand written thesis....so I had to do the forbidden and buy a computer (a 486).... and since my major was in Civil Engineering, I had some math to look forward to...

..anyways to make a long story short, I was introduced to WordPerfect (6.0) and Excel 2.0..  Needless to say, I was very intimidated, especially by Excel... I couldn't grasp its concept; cells....what goes in those cells?.....  Eventually I started created simple formulas and drawing little beams with arrows to show forces on the beams, etc... It started becoming quite fun.... I started getting down those If() statements and Vlookup() and next thing you know, I was formulating all sorts of Engineering formulas in Excel.

...Later in life, when I got office jobs, I found that I was one of very very few that even knew what an IF() statement was or what Vlookup() was... and I became designer of many spreadsheets...

...Now, with the help of these forums (that's for sure), I am proud to call myself somewhat of an Excel guru....  and it's fun and addictive too!... I just gotta grasp the VBA part better...

... any other experiences out there?

----------


## dominicb

I've been using computers, and into the programming side since getting my first computer - a ZX Spectrum back in 1982.  My first experience with spreadsheets came at college in 1986 when I used Lotus Symphony.  After University I started working for an NHS Trust where they used Lotus 1-2-3, that ran under DOS - I can't remember the version number but it may have been 2 point something(??).  We then upgrade to a Windows 3.1 version that supported multiple sheets.  As the resident 1-2-3 wizard I was occasionally asked to help out with the Trust's accounts which were supposed to be submitted not in 1-2-3's format, but in the format of some new young upstart to the market from the guys that brought us (the still very unsteady) Windows.  I seem to remember it was called Excel *and I hated it*!!!!

Several years later I got a job as a Cost Analyst at Osram, where they used Office (I think it was version 5 - we're talking 1997 here) and we soon upgraded to Excel 97.  I soon got used to its quirks, and the rest, as they say, is history...

DominicB

----------


## Simon Lloyd

I have to admit to being the baby of the bunch then, i had a Commodore 64 (yes i know i was "Posh") when they first came out, i had a little dable with the sprites and stuff you could program but didn't really interest me and other than playing the then labouriously slow, hit n miss loading games! many many years passed.....in fact more than that! and i started an Open University course in Electronics where i had to have and use a computer, a sine wave generator and oscilloscope.....got brain overload, i dabbled with things in my pc that no man should ever venture into, infact i rang help desk that much i used to tell them how to fix it using DOS (that name sends a shiver up my spine!), that started me on the trail of being interested, there i was doing wonderful things with an Amstrad and SuperCalc (what a program!), then came the spanner in the works Win 95, all fingers and thumbs again i set to work getting to grips with it..........from there on in just a coast of using the PC until i started messing with Excel in 2000 (excel 95) and couldnt make it work!, later on in 2004 and using Windows NT i discovered i could make Excel do "pretty things" and organise lines of data, my works had a little trouble keeping stuff organised and i opened my big trap....hey i can do that.....oops! should have kept it buttoned!, what they had was a very large problem that conditional formatting and formulae would not sort it was there i dived in to VBA with one 8 hour lesson and loads of help from this forum........here i am 4 years on and truly addicted!

----------


## martindwilson

Well back in the late seventies early eighties the first digital private telephone exchanges came on line.
Being what they were they often required patching to iron out bugs.
Unfortunately our interface with said exchanges was either a massive genicom printer or a silent 700 data terminal(thermal paper which faded,just the thing for keeping records,NOT!)
We had to send of our saved configuration on 51/4 floppies then a patched version would be sent back. Unfortunately the moves and changes done since the original capture had to be re input .We had rolls of telytype with all commands done by the customer whilst we were awaiting the patch/upgrade.
These had to be re-entered  manually and could run into several thousand entries, 
Then we got a laptop whoopee (shared of course between about 7 of us),and could save direct as text
We used to then use notepad and word to manipulate these logs
 One day some bright spark  discovered excel and csv format. Yippe splitting dates from data, finding duplicates wow what a tool.
Havent stopped using it since.
Now mostly use it for generating cisco configs from a table of customer data,Mail merge was /is used but this can give weird results especially if data is wrong in the fields.
Much better to use excel,  built in Validation, concatenate strings lookups, arrays  etc. Couldnt do My job without it.
And strangely its FUN, I enjoy the puzzle of pulling data from weird layouts and now I am trying to learn a bit of VBA..(well a bit late i'm over 50 now  :Smilie:  )

----------


## darkyam

Don't remember when I first used Excel, probably when I was 15 or 16 to help me with some math problems that I couldn't do in my head and didn't want to do on paper (no calculator handy).  I didn't learn more than the absolute basics until college, when I had to learn the finance formulas and a little formatting for my accounting classes.  Then, in my first real job out of college, I started creating what I then considered complex forecasting models, spending a ton of time writing massive formulas and working around the limitations of nested Ifs because I was so unfamiliar with other formulas.  After two years there, I got my current job, where I have been for nearly three years, and before I had been here six months, we hired someone who is almost as good as some of the moderators here.  He showed me array formulas, VLOOKUP, named ranges, and a host of other tips and tricks.  
Needless to say, after he started teaching me, I felt like I had learned only 1/1000th of what the program can do, so I started playing with Excel and asking a bunch of questions.  
Before long, I was on Ozgrid, reading posts and starting a few of them.  I also went through a number of the tutorials on ozgrid and learned about index/match, advanced charting techniques, sumproduct, rank, and many other useful tools.  After doing that for a while and making spreadsheets left and right at work, I became known as the office Excel wiz (my teacher worked offsite), which is way too high a compliment, considering I learn things almost every day I'm on here.  Then, a couple months ago, I started helping out here and I've really enjoyed it.
One of these days, I'll buckle down and learn VBA, but for the most part, I can do everything I need to do quickly enough without it.  Thanks to the moderators and especially daddylonglegs for pointing out the inefficiencies and flaws in my formulas.

----------


## Richard Buttrey

Dominic, thanks for reminding me about Lotus Symphony, I'd forgotten about that one. I remember using that on an old PC I bought from Time Computers, (who were rubbish at customer service but that's for another thread at another time).

I've also just remembered Lotus Improv which I dabbled with in the early 90s I think it was. The company I was with had been a Lotus 123 shop from time immemorial, and I'd used it since I forsook Supercalc sometime in the early 80s. Although Improv looked somewhat like a 123 spreadhseet it was a completely different beast and I was completely blown away by it. We had a few copies on trial and I really enjoyed using it. With the benefit of hindsight of course it was the first of the OLAP cubing products that we fall over everywhere these days, and way way ahead of its time in my opinion.

I suppose that was the problem. As a company what should we do? Stick with a significant knowledge investment in 123, or use Improv? Or both perhaps? I think this uncertainty, and often a failure by even IT management to understand how powerful it could be, lead to a lot of indecision. I remember commenting at the time, whilst trying to convince people about the potential power of Improv, that they should think of it like the advent of the first lasers in the early 60s, which I remember being famously described as, "a solution looking for a problem", since no one then quite knew what a laser could be used for. 

Maybe that was bad move on my part.  :Mad:  Some management seem to prefer certainty over foresight.

Unfortunately this indecision and lack of understanding, over what businesses in general perceived as two rival products from the same Lotus stable, was just about the time  Excel was arriving on the scene. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Regards

----------


## Gearcutter

Hi, How I started in Excel.
Unlike most of the Posters in this thread I have no background in Excel or even in computers. Until 3 years ago I was computer illiterate,the nearest I had been to a computer was going through the checkout in the supermarket!
                  I might add at this point that I had spent most of my working life doing what my login name suggests I was a gear cutter.
                   As I entered my 65 year my wife and I decided to buy a computer, She I might add  used a computer every day at work so she had some knowledge. The day finally arrived when IT arrived on our doorstep, we took it into our back bedroom where it was going to live and there it stopped, everything still in it's box waiting for us to put it together,the screen, the printer, the keyboard, the big oblong box with the cd tray in it, the speakers, the mouse. There it stayed for about 2 weeks before I plucked up enough courage to investigate what was in the various boxes, and having got that far I managed to plug everything together. Eventually we switched on, under the guidance of our daughter Helen.
                  The first few months was a combination of  exhilaration and panic stations as things went right and then went badly wrong, I remember on one occasion everything on the screen was upside-down, that was really weird I pressed every button under the sun, can't remember how it came right but eventually it did.
                   So how did I get into Excel? I mentioned that I was a gear cutter I decided to use the internet to find a gear cutting formula a for a Base Tangent measurement which I found here
http://www.drgears.com/gearterms/terms/basetangent.htm   I remember looking at it and thinking, ah well... back to the drawing board! I did print it off and take it to work with me, I finally did work it out on a calculator, and told my boss John about it,and he filled me in about calculating it in Excel. John spent a few late evenings working it out in excel before trying to explain to me what it was all about.(I must admit I thought that a spreadsheet was a holiday planner)seeing what John had done and the speed that it calculated absolutely fascinated me. Seeing as we had Office on the computer at home I decided that I was going to give it a go, it took me quite some time but I stuck at it and eventually I worked it out.
                 That was a little under 3 years ago since then I have progressed to writing the same base tangent formula as a user defined function along with other less complicated gear cutting formulas,as well as learning as much as I could about this fascinating new hobby that I have, called Excel.
 Howard

----------


## NBVC

> Hi, How I started in Excel.
> Unlike most of the Posters in this thread I have no background in Excel or even in computers. Until 3 years ago I was computer illiterate,the nearest I had been to a computer was going through the checkout in the supermarket!
>                   I might add at this point that I had spent most of my working life doing what my login name suggests I was a gear cutter.
>                    As I entered my 65 year my wife and I decided to buy a computer, ...



...proof that it is never too late to do anything..... good for you!

----------


## martindwilson

> Until 3 years ago I was computer illiterate,the nearest I had been to a computer was going through the checkout in the supermarket!



quick ring my office,Job Waiting for you!!!!! I assure you you are HIGHLY skilled in comparison to some I know  who have been using PC's and office applications for years  :Wink:   :Wink:

----------


## daddylonglegs

> Thanks to the moderators and especially daddylonglegs for pointing out the inefficiencies and flaws in my formulas.



Sorry! it's the pedant in me.......

Do you remember a spreadsheet application called supercalc? That was the first spreadsheet I used, around 1990...

I didn't use excel until we got it, as standard, at work probably around 1993. I wrote some macros in excel 4 [pre VBA], not very good ones, very reliant on the recorder, although some (updated versions) of those are still in use in my workplace today, showcasing some unnecessarily complex formulas and conditional formatting done in such a "cack-handed" way that I ought to have been shot  :Smilie:  

Problem was, I suppose, that I had nobody to teach me and no internet forums to help me out, I learnt nearly everything by trial and error or RTFM.

A few years later I needed to expand my very basic code (most of it just automated the task of inserting formulas and conditional formatting) and use a few fancier formulas so, by this time we were on line and I started using forums like this and other sites to learn a few tips and tricks.

I soon realised I could pass on a few tips and tricks of my own (although I doubt there's a day goes by that I don't learn something, lurking on a forum)

My passion is for time and date related formulas, I can't see one without thinking how it can be improved. It's nice to see some of the formulas I originated popping up in different forums or odd places, although it can be oddly disconcerting too, it's like seeing your children grow up and go out into the world, you worry they'll fall into bad company.....

----------


## darkyam

> Sorry! it's the pedant in me.......



Nothing at all to apologize for.  You've taught me a ton about different ways to employ certain functions (that recent bit about Dollarfr was brilliant) and helped me think out some of my formulas a little better and shorten them.  Anytime you see a flaw in some formula I've posted, please feel free to let me know, even if the formula itself yields the correct result as is.

----------


## ChemistB

Hmmm, I also cannot recall my first use of Excel but I do know it was my first Spreadsheet program.  I dabbled in Lotus and QuatroPro but my roots were in Excel.   My first computer experiences were in college and we had to program in FORTRAN, get punch cards and have them run through the mainframe.  Then we (the students) would wait by the only printer (a huge tractorfed thing) which would print out our name in huge letters and then all the lines that caused our program to crash.   :Smilie:    That was late seventies.

ChemistB

----------


## Simon Lloyd

Lol Chemist, i remember using CECIL wher you filed in the black dots on a card and did the same thing!, jeez thank god the stone age is over!!!!

----------


## mudraker

My 1st Spreadsheet program was Ezycalc on an Atari at home - pre IBM 286 days. Learnt from the manual over many months. 


On the IBM at work (286) it was some dog of a system that I don;t remember the name of. was not allowed anywhere near Lotus or Excel 3

Excel 4 once it became standard within the company.

Got into macro' s when the manager who had started writing one & did not have the time to finish it & passed it onto me to finish it. With no knowledge of Excel Macros it was back to RTM. After 2 weeks by some miracle It workded. Took approx 5 minutes to run. After approx 12 months experience writing macro's I re-wrote the macro which brought the run time down to less than 1 minute. 

Spent the next fer years writing several hundred macros to manipulate data. (Wish I had 20% of the money they saved the company) which is why I no very little about functions compared to VBA

----------


## Andrew-Mark

I avoided anything spread-sheet like for as long as possible; fearing it, scared witless by it!

Then I had no choice; I needed to do something that only something like Excel would do.  So I dived in and found that it wasn't that scary after all.  I would get stuck quite often but became adept at using the help function and deciphering just what it was MS were trying to explain in their normal clear and informative way  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):  

Then I was not scared, I was not avoiding Excel.  There's nothing to fear here....sorry?  VBA?  OMG!!!  :EEK!:    Run! Hide!!

I calmed down when I found this place until I read more and more of the posts and realised that there was so much I didn't know  :Frown:   I am scared by the way some of you can write these formulae so quickly.  I need a teacher, any offers?  :Wink:

----------

