“My works will still be serving Humanity when those of others are dust: I am an Engineer.” –Rick Raubenheimer.
It is a rare privilege to be an Engineer. To produce work that serves and enriches humanity and our planet. To create things that may exist long after you are gone.
It’s also not easy. Doctors bury their mistakes. Lawyers pretend they never happened. If the ad executive’s campaign succeeds or flops, who will remember it?
But the mistakes of the Engineer are on display for all to see –to curse, or to laugh at– for generations yet unborn.
The bridge that doesn’t line up with the road.
Or the bridge that fails.
The spacecraft that crashes.
Which is why we double- and triple-check our calculations. Why we wake at 3 am in a cold sweat and check yet again.
“With great power comes great responsibility”
Attributed to Spiderman (charcter by Stan Lee).
Now let’s talk about Microsoft Excel…
Excel is arguably the most powerful general calculation tool available to you as an engineer. Because of its origins in spreadsheets, an accounting tool, we may think of it as merely for accountants. That would be a mistake.
Excel has outgrown its accounting roots. Modern Excel has many features and functions to serve the scientific and engineering community. Matrix functions, scatter charts, statistical and engineering functions, even Goal Seek (some soccer players should use that too!).
On this site, and through our links, you can learn more about Excel. Use it to speed your calculations, streamline your computations, automate routine work. Start tapping the knowledge of engineers like you. Become the expert, the leader, in your company. Reap the rewards.
How? Tips. Examples. Courses. Personal support for subscribers.
Explore this site. We are constantly adding useful information. Where you see a gap, ask!
Excel is a powerful engineering tool.
But this power brings with it awesome responsibility. You can set up your own formulas; and set them up wrong. You can enter your own values, and you can mistype them. Ultimately, you are responsible.
Excel can help you with this, too. There are tools and techniques to help you find errors more easily. Formulas and formatting that will highlight dubious values. Advanced auditing and automatic error reporting. On this site, we’ll focus on those too.
For a start, how about a free report on common mistakes in Excel and how to avoid them? Click the button directly below, give us your email address, and we’ll give you our report, “Are You Making These Microsoft Excel Mistakes?”:
Bookmark this page NOW to find it easily again.
Great News! Excel for Engineers Course is Live!
The Excel for Engineers course is now on our new online platform, systeme.io. It has video in almost all lessons, This is the most complete one we have produced. Besides the video, there are extra sample files and material we don’t have time for on the regular two-day live course.
Why should you take the Excel for Engineers course?
The course is full of benefits for any Excel user in a technical field. Using 19 pre-built spreadsheets (yours to keep), we cover subjects like:
- Excel as an Engineering and Scientific Tool
- Simple Formulas and Formatting, how to use the absolute “$”
- Good Worksheet Design and error-checking
- Advanced Functions: conditions, fancy lookups, dates and times, text, subtotals
- Creating and Working with a Database
- Pivot Tables to summarise any which way
- Scenario Manager and reports
- Visualising data with Graphs
- Goal Seek and Solver; iterating manually or automatically
- Introduction to automation with Macros
- Using Excel as a pre- and post-processor for other programs
- …and more, with a dash of silly humour thrown in! (see the Curriculum in the link below)
Do it at your own pace at times that suit you. Take half an hour a day and complete it in a month. Spend an hour a day and finish it in two weeks. Or dedicate two days –a weekend, perhaps?– and crack the whole course.
Sign Up Now and get three Free Bonuses:
- A Free Support Group to save your sanity.
- The Report, “Are You Making These Microsoft Excel Mistakes?” could save your company millions.
- The Excel file “Excel Shortcut keys & My Macro Shortcuts” to save your macro shortcuts and save you from overwriting Excel’s.