How To Collect Data With Excel In 2023 (Without Annoying Your Coworkers!)
How To Collect Data With Excel In 2023 (Without Annoying Your Coworkers!)
Welcome back to Day 5 of 30 Day Excel Analyst – transforming your analytical skillset in 30 days.
We’ve all been there. You’ve had a tough day at work. A lot has happened. It’s been emotional.
You remember promising a colleague earlier to share some basic information. Ok - it’s a simple admin job and should be a straightforward finish to a complicated day. Routine stuff – finally!
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The email comes in. And …
Your colleague asks you to fill out and return an Excel file
Now, I acknowledge this happens all the time – and I’m not criticizing people for this. It’s a perfectly logical way to collect information in the organizational world – create a proforma and ask people to populate it. Isn’t that what Excel’s for?
I find this kind of data collection request intensely frustrating. In fact, I quit university teaching because being asked constantly to provide data in an inefficient way was draining my energy.
At the risk of labouring the point, let’s look at what this request entails:
Open the email and mentally process the request
Download the attachment
Locate the attachment in your downloads folder
Open the attachment
Enable editing on the newly-opened Excel file
Save the Excel file (might need a new folder …)
Complete the data input (please, please, please tell me it’s easy!)
Save the file again
Start an email reply and write the email (with professional tone 😊)
Attach the file
Send the email
Each step with its own risks (‘oh sorry, I sent you the wrong attachment …’) And, the person who sent the original email now manually collates data from multiple Excel files, assuming they are building up some kind of dataset. And perhaps they want to acknowledge receipt of your response too. All told, it’s a huge amount of work for a basic admin task.
As I said, I don’t want to sound over-critical - I used to collect data in this way too.
However, if you’re collecting data in this way, not only are failing to harness Excel effectively, you’re also causing undue frustration for your colleagues – even if they don’t tell you!
In this session, I show you the actual approach we use on real-world projects to do this kind of data collection task. It’s an approach that I’ve come to love, our customers seem to love it too. Because it saves their staff a huge amount of time and energy. And, isn’t that what Excel’s for?
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