Excel Project

   When I first read through the instructions for this project, my first thoughts were "I'm going to fail."   Considering the fact that I knew very little about Microsoft Excel, the pages of instructions and tasks that I needed to complete seemed extremely daunting.  However, as I watched the lectures that featured the Excel tutorials, and experimented with the program on my own, I slowly began to realize that I could in fact complete the project and do a satisfactory job doing so.

   The basic functions that were the beginning steps of the project such as adding rows and columns, formatting the font, and manipulating the data were things that I could figure out on my own and were relatively self-explanatory.  However, as I approached the part of the project where we had to create formulas, I realized that it was all uncharted territory.  The very basic formulas were not very challenging to make, and it got easier to do it quickly with practice, but it was the complex ones that took me a long time to figure out and do correctly.  The formula that was most frustrating for me to create was the "Target Achieved" column.  After a few failed attempts at trying it on my own, I finally had to refer back to the lectures and then even had to Google the information.  After watching the part of the lecture three straight times, I finally understood how to do it and was able to enter the information into my worksheet.  I felt accomplished and will know how to do this formula from now on!

   Pivot tables were another challenge but relatively easy to manage.  I found putting the information into the pivot tables to be relatively simple, however, formatting the pivot tables was challenging and I had to refer back to the lectures quite a bit to get all of the necessary steps done.  Overall, I think that this project was very useful and taught me a lot about Excel.  The fact that I had to refer back to lectures to get specific information about how to do something and even look up on the internet at points made the information stick.  I am confident that I will be able to complete similar Excel procedures in my future endeavors all thanks to this activity.  This particular project was a great learning experience that will be very useful in time to come.