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?

Lu's picture

Quilting patterns. Both visually...

Quilting patterns. Both visually representative of the ultimate layout and calculating how much fabric of each color I need. I know there are programs for quilters to do that for you...but those are extra money!! Also, I use excel to track book, movie, and music collection and wishlist with tracking for market values on Ebay/Half.com/Amazon Marketplace. As an executive recruiter, I use excel spreadsheets to track what resumes I've submitted, where they are in the process, next step, and keep track of all submissions to my personal clients.

 
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